This is the third part of a series on The Synthetic Aesthetic: artwork which is mechanically made as opposed to handmade ( Part 1 / Part 2 ).  Fractal art borders on this synthetic realm because it is one of the most powerful tools for the computational generation of imagery.

Most people commonly think of fractal art as the visualization of math or of at least having a unique character because of its inner workings that draw on the principles of fractal geometry.  However, I think fractal programs have for years been used primarily to synthesize artwork of a much more general nature and the connection with fractal math is an exaggeration.  If someone can make the same kind of fractal art in Photoshop as one does in Ultra Fractal but without the use of fractal algorithms, then surely the fractal link in much of fractal art these days is truly weak.

This doesn’t mean fractal art is no good anymore.  All of the fractal artworks I’m going to review here and compare have been selected by others for their artistic merit.  My point is that fractal programs are capable of producing highly distinctive works exemplifying the graphical creativity of fractal geometry, but also of producing things that are much less distinctive and best regarded as just digital art made in a fractal program.

That “digital art made in a fractal program” is an example of the synthesizing capabilities of fractal programs.  Fractal artists these days chose to pursue the more wide-ranging, synthetic themes than the classical fractal shapes and structures of the past.  While doing so, however, they blurred the distinction between Ultra Fractal and Photoshop, which I think you will see in the images below.

Fractal Dimentia front page art by Mark Townsend (fractal)

I have used fractal images that were chosen for the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Exhibits (winners) since I wanted to used fractal art that was representative of a consensus of opinions and therefore exemplary of fractal art today.  I could have chosen eccentric examples from unknown artists but they could easily be shrugged off as not representative of anything except themselves.  Mark had an image similar to the one above included in one of the exhibits and this one here is from the front page of his online gallery site; clearly a favourite of his.

Below is an image by Randy Kochis.  He says this about it:

Here’s a new abstract piece that was done using a wacom tablet and some filters. You can’t really appreciate the detail with this size but you can tell it has a lot going on.

Whether one is better than the other is not what these comparisons are about.  The style of imagery is essentially the same and yet they were made in two very different programs.  One using fractal algorithms and the other a stylus and Photoshop.  Granted, Mark’s image doesn’t depict complex fractal structures that would be difficult to duplicate with non-fractal methods and so it’s not really an example of Ultra Fractal vs. Photoshop for making fractals.  But that’s the whole point that much of fractal art today isn’t reliant on the complex drawing powers of formulas but rather the creative possibilities of rich rendering methods and the careful selection of zoomed-in areas.

cartoon-show by Randy Kochis (non-fractal)

Intrepid 1 by Yvonne Mous

Yvonnes’s image was a BMFAC winner.  The similarity between it and the image below by Deviant Artist, Irn Bru, is the fact that either one could have been made in either UF or PS.  Of the two, Yvonne’s image looks more processed because of the chopped up look but I suspect that’s just the result of a sophisticated rendering method in UF.  Irn Bru  says this about his (non-fractal) image below:

I created this in Photoshop as a texture for my ‘Abstract Ornamental’ piece.

In Cinema 4D, I created a new vray texture and selected the ‘Diffuse Layer 1’. Loaded the image as the texture map and set it to 100%. Then all I did was check ‘Specular Layer 5’ and left it at default.

Abstract_Ornamental___Texture_by_irn_bru (non-fractal)

Fusion by Sandra Reid (fractal)

Sandra’s image, another BMFAC winner, is perhaps too good of an example of the minimal role that fractals have in today’s fractal art scene.  Although the title fits the work nicely and perhaps is an allusion to the fusing of classic fractal imagery with the newer, general synthetic variety (i.e. detailed background), it could almost be considered a “token” element.  Take a look at Randy’s “non-fractal” spiralling mass, and ask which one would be easier to make with tablet in Photoshop.

Randy adds these notes about the image:

I had fun making this image with a Wacom tablet and a cool brush in Photoshop. Mostly playing around but I think it turned out pretty good. The original image is huge and the detail is amazing!

Note, once again, the allusion to amazing detail.  That’s the sort of thing one expects from fractal imagery because the formulas are so good at calculating such things, but it appears to be characteristic of many kinds of computer graphics.

Spirals1 by Randy Kochis (non-fractal)

Imaginary Mine by Maulana Randa

I hope Maulana will forgive me for this, but I’m not suggesting her his work is nothing more than a few splotches from a “brush” in PS.  This was made in a fractal flame program like maybe Apophysis (I’m guessing) but even flame fractals don’t look  like they used to.  Anyhow, my point (I hope it’s not too sharp) is that PS also makes such examples of rich jewelled and metallic looking wonders.  Clearly fractal art, even in the flames area, is just one way of rendering such artwork.

There are no notes for the image below; it’s simply the sample image from a PS tutorial.  By the way, check out the nicely textured background.  Importing backgrounds are a snap in UF.  I’m guessing they are because they’re used so often.

easy-abstract-photoshop-tutorial-2 by Rocka J

20061012-vor10 by Samuel Monnier

Alright.  Remember the point of this posting is that many fractal artworks have moved into less distinctive territory and because of this one often finds similar artworks that are not the result of fractal formula rendering.  Sam’s work above was part of a BMFAC exhibition in the judge’s category.  While it has detail that would be pretty hard to imitate in PS, it also has an aesthetic that is much less exclusive.  Geometric assemblages and patterns are an example of what I would call the fractal aesthetic,  a fractal style of imagery associated with fractal programs and not strictly fractal math itself.

This cellphone case wasn’t made in PS obviously but being made of sequins and metalic shapes, the star shape being most prominent, it does reflect the same style –but different source idea– that I’ve been talking about.  Sam’s image is of course a much more sophisticated and elegant work of art than the cellphone case below, but the two objects have an awful lot in common in a basic, visual sense although  they are not of the same quality of work, clearly.

dream star swarovski elements crystal Iphone cases cover by Swarovksiiphone

I hope at the very least you’re seeing a glimmer of my idea that many highly esteemed fractal artworks aren’t really all that unique when compared with some of the things that can be made without any fractal formulas in Photoshop or even crafting class.  But we shouldn’t really expect such exclusivity when we consider how wide-ranging the rendering capabilities of a program like Ultra Fractal is, and has become, and especially when we take into account its non-fractal features like image importing and various layering abilities.  You can’t expect the same old stuff when you’re using software like that.

Fractal art by default has come to be defined by whatever you can make in a fractal program.  As a result, when fractal programs add rendering and processing features this literally redefines the genre.  The result is that fractal artists have greater latitude in what they can depict in their artwork and they’ve naturally drifted away from the cliche and common, classical style of fractal imagery towards fresh horizons.

But is that still “fractal enough” for those who look to fractal art for the depiction of more obvious mathematical themes?  I can’t help but wonder if the ICM, the original sponsors of the BMFAC have no fractal art exhibition listed on their 2014 website because they no longer see this fractal art stuff as having any serious mathematical connection?  Is it all too much of something else?

Synthetic is what I think that “something else” is and it’s been there ever since the computer rendering of fractals began.  Fractal artists have turned their eyes from capturing visualized math to beholding bold new graphical concoctions.  And in the next instalment, Part 4, I’ll have something more definite and clear to say about that.

In the first part of this series, I introduced a few new ideas which have a central part to play in my concept of the Synthetic Aesthetic.  I believe it might be of great benefit to pause and clarify those ideas before moving on to examples of actual artwork that illustrate these trends.

Here’s the idea:

Fractal art has become progressively ambiguous in terms of what it looks like and depicts (i.e. subject matter) to the point that now it is no longer unique and distinctive and could just as easily be given a generic label like “synthetic” rather than “fractal”.  Fractal art is no longer an art form exclusively dedicated to “math visualization” as fractal artists have abandoned that easily identifiable visual theme in the pursuit of a broader artistry defined only by whatever can be done with a “fractal” program.

While doing so, they have produced artwork with greater artistic appeal but at the same time with less mathematical relevance.   Although the inner workings of the software still remain fractal formula based  –the only thing that distinguishes fractal art as a distinct artistic category in the first place– the role of these fractal algorithms are now largely employed by artists in “anonymous roles”, unrecognizable and becoming mere anecdotes to the finished artwork rather than the essential element.

This is much the same way that Terragen’s computer generated and photo-realistic landscapes can be said to have a fractal connection because they were “made with fractals” — that is, deep in the inner recesses of their computer code; a trivial distinction which has never made anyone seriously consider them as “fractal” art.

Four nicely numbered points

So, two things have occurred:

1) Fractal art has become much broader in scope and now includes artwork which in appearance is quite similar to other computer “synthesized” art forms despite their widely differing software origins;

2) Fractal art has created a look or visual style that has come to be associated with its fractal algorithms but is really much more a product of its many rendering methods which apply computer graphical rendering techniques and effects, some of which can also be found in computer graphics programs and there used to produce artwork with the same “fractal aesthetic” as fractal art although no fractal algorithms are actually used, only similar graphical rendering methods directed by other, non-fractal methods.

This has lead to a third occurrence, the logical consequence of the two previous items:

3) While the term, fractal art might be confusing when applied to those “fractal-looking” artworks made in a graphics program, the term, fractal art is probably just as confusing when applied to those “synthetic-looking” artworks made in a fractal program.

Which leads us to a fourth item:

4) If one considers solely the visual style and creative method of artworks and forgets for a moment what they were made with, there will appear a rather logical grouping to a wide variety of artworks which previously had been separated by their apparently distinctive mediums or tools but actually fit together like scattered puzzle pieces when rallied under the simple label of “synthetic” art.

Fractal art has actually lead the way in all this and stands as the strongest tool for “synthesizing” art.

Un-defining fractal art

Anyhow, the fractal art world has changed.  The boundaries are different now.  Actually, the boundaries have disappeared.  It all happened when, deliberately or not, fractal artists came to define their art form as whatever can be made with a fractal program.  With the arrival of exotic rendering functions and graphical features like layering, these new tools redefined fractal art because they redefined the fractal program –the de facto specification for fractal art.

Perhaps the word is not so much “redefined” as “un-defined” since the results of expanding the toolset of fractal artists has been the creation of  artworks characterized by some very “un-fractal” features found in graphics programs like Photoshop.  The end result we see today is that the domain of fractal art partially overlaps the domain of what I would describe as synthetic art.  A domain distinguished by a style or aesthetic lacking the involvement of the human hand and instead expressing only that of the algorithmic, the accidental or the mechanical.

In the next part, Part 3, I will show some relevant examples of what I’ve been talking about which ought to make things a lot clearer  by making them less abstract and more concrete.

This is another one of those theoretical postings; you might want to skip it and go look at some fresh fractal art instead.  But if you’re still interested, in this posting I intend to examine what fractal art has come to be and show that this evolution of the art form has made fractal art much less relevant as “math art” and instead gradually transformed it into a less exclusive computer art genre of “synthetic art” uniting it with a wider array of software and methods, all of which do much the same thing and collectively exemplify what I call, “The Synthetic Aesthetic.”

By “aesthetic” I mean the basic style, appearance and themes that come to identify a genre of art –what the art form depicts and likes to express.  Impressionism, Photo Realism, Surrealism; these are all aesthetics.  Grunge is an aesthetic made of rough, worn, grungy things.  Oil painting is not an aesthetic, it’s just a much broader kind of thing called a medium.  The type of art one pursues and creates with oil paints can form an aesthetic, however.  Pointillism is an aesthetic characterized by points of color rather than connected brushstrokes.  Surrealism is an aesthetic defined more by a common theme than a common visual style or method.

An aesthetic is formed out of a complex collection of things and as such the term naturally involves some amount of generalization; some works in the same genre being strong examples while others may be weak ones.

Could a “fractal” program produce this?

The Fractal Aesthetic

Firstly let’s consider the possibility of a “Fractal Aesthetic” –a distinct and recognizable graphical style associated with fractal art.

I have often sensed a disconnection between fractal math and fractal art but been at a loss to explain it since you obviously can’t have fractal imagery without a fractal formula and therefore the two can’t really be disconnected, can they?  But from the perspective of a viewer of fractal art, fractal art exhibits very little of the visible geometric and mathematical relevance that it did in its early days when artworks could also be the subjects of mathematical discussions and include intriguing image notes.  All those traditional scientific aspects to fractal art have drifted into a behind the scenes role while the increasingly dazzling graphical rendering techniques have taken center stage.

Few fractal artworks seem to contain the distinguishing characteristics of the formula used to create them.  This is because, knowingly or otherwise, fractal artists simply use fractal formulas to create a source of imagery –a pool of imagery– from which they fish around in and select from.  The fractal formula’s unique characteristics is rarely the actual subject of their work.  It could be if they wanted, but that isn’t what seems to excite fractal artists much or draw their interest.

This shifting of the spotlight from clear fractal formula structures and characteristics to fishing around for whatever looks “awesome” isn’t a product of the medium, it’s a preferential choice made by artists.  Perhaps straightforward, identifiable fractal images with spirals, mandelbrots, minibrots, and julias and so on are seen as cliche and dull by most fractal artists today?

Would you recognize a fractal imposter?

I once argued that “un-fractal” imagery was the pursuit of most fractal artists nowadays.  If it is, then it’s a reasonable and expected sort of behaviour as even the most exotic fractal formulas like the buddhabrot, for instance yield more creative power from tweaking their rendering options and carefully selecting detailed areas of them than they do from tweaking their formula parameters.  Rendering is where the artistry takes place.  Also, artwork that focuses on the formula tends to have less of a “personalized” appearance and represent less of an artistic accomplishment.  Once again we’re back to the problem of creating work that avoids anything that is perceived as being cliche, something that formulas of any kind are apt to produce.

The fractal aesthetic is easy to describe and identify.  Basically, whatever looks like it was made in a fractal program is literally the fractal aesthetic.  That might sound rather simplistic and vague because fractal programs produce such a wide range of imagery and offer such a wide range of rendering options, but actually the fractal aesthetic is easy to spot by people who, ironically, are not fractal artists.  Try uploading a fractal image to the wrong category on Deviant Art and see how quickly someone “spots it”.  Fractal artists might think their genre is one of subtleties and arcane mathematics but to everyone else it’s pretty plain and obvious.

Guess the fractal program, win a prize…

Synthetic Shapes and Patterns

Fractal programs have created an aesthetic of artificially composed synthetic shapes and patterns.  For example: arrangements of twisted tubes; balloon like sausages; lightning bolts in crushed paper; vast fields of fractured glass; bubble vistas; gardens of glowing gas; anything with a spiral (that’s an obvious one); jungles of geometry; simple shapes with subtle changes in color and texture across every pixel; mettalic imagery that radiates with infinite detail;  etc…  These are the hallmarks of fractal art; occasionally the elegance of math, but always the wonders of exotic rendering options.

We have collectively created an art form which is quite distinct and quite distinctive.  It’s just that the thing that distinguishes fractal art is no long fractal geometry, its the synthetic rendering techniques; these have become the “face” of “fractal” art.

A Summary

Fractal programs “draw” just as people draw using a graphics program.  Fractal programs, however, draw with the stiffly deterministic but amazingly talented robotic arm of a fractal formula.  It’s the drawing styles of fractal programs (rendering methods) which have become the focus of fractal art rather than the fractal formula which is directing the program’s “pen” or “brush”.  The subject matter therefore of most fractal artworks is usually a zoomed-in fragment of a rendered formula which depicts some interesting effect created by the rendering technology –or exaggerated by it– rather than a unique and identifiable piece of the formula’s mathematical anatomy.  Artists could chose to focus more on mathematical and scientific “portraits”, but most chose not to and subsequently fractal art has come to be an art form of “renderisms” rather than famous formulas.

Terragen and Fractalgen

Again, I don’t see any of this shift to “renderisms” as a bad thing.  In fact, I find the whole thing rather exciting, now that I see what’s going on.  Fractal art is an artistic pursuit and fractal artists care a whole lot more about how artistically appealing an image is than how well it depicts fractal geometry (if at all).  In fact, and this is my main point here, fractal artists hardly ever attempt to display recognizable fractal characteristics in their images because that’s not what interests them.  Nobody is ever worried that their artwork will lose it’s “fractal status” as long as they stick to using fractal software.  The creative process is such that the formulas become the graphical engine of the fractal software while the rendering techniques for the most part determine what that artwork looks like.

This of course is what makes Terragen, a graphical landscape generator, although it utilizes fractal formulas, disqualified from creating fractal art: it just makes pretty landscape scenes with the help of fractal computer code.  Fractals are merely part of Terragen’s graphical processing.

Terragen is an extreme example of fractal algorithms creating un-fractal art, but many fractal artworks whose subject matter is some (magnificent) detail plundered from the deep recesses of a fractal image and rendered in an exotic way are just as cut-off from their fractal roots as any sun-splashed mountain scene from Terragen.  The only difference is that Terragen scenes are immediately recognized as something familiar and easily classified –as landscapes.  Everyone knows that Terragen images aren’t fractals because they can clearly see that they’re landscapes.  The hidden fractal characteristics are merely an interesting anecdote to go along with the image as well as any other trivial about “how they were made”.

Which brings me to the title of this posting, “The Synthetic Aesthetic”.  Fractal art settles quite logically and reasonably under the graphical label of “synthetic” rather than “fractal” just as “Terragen Art” fits intuitively into the category of “landscape” rather than “fractal”.  Fractal art is the use of fractal formulas to synthesize art.  But that synthetic art, although distinctly derived from the processing powers of fractal formulas, resembles in appearance many other kinds of computer synthesized artwork.

In fact, I think the distinction between fractal art and any other kind of computer synthesized imagery is entirely a matter of tradition, specifically a tradition that has assumed that fractal art was a special form of art because it was uniquely mathematical and therefore “different” because of that.  Fractal art is uniquely fractal in its method of creation but that feature no longer leads to the creation of artwork that is graphically unique in its appearance when placed in the context of other computer synthesized artworks.  In fact, ironically perhaps, the fractal aesthetic has actually come to be one of the best examples of the synthetic aesthetic.

I have more to say about this.  In Part 2 I will try to show how “synthesized art” is so close to fractal art aesthetically that separating the two groups from each other is creatively inhibiting as well as artistically retarded.  But I won’t use words like that.

What shower of insults and rotten tomatoes are provoked up by such a play on the expression, “Paint by Numbers”?  And yet, to those who know what galactic boundaries are quickly traversed by just a few (million) iterations of the simplest of fractal formulas, the phrase “Paint by Fractals” is nothing short of rocket-powered creativity.  For those of you who aren’t sure of what I’m getting at just look at the pictures.

~Click on images to view full-size on original sites~

Double apparition of Louis XIV at the stairways of a Mini-minibulb in the Versailles of Mandelbulbs by Kraftwerk

How does this one make me think of “painting”?  Although the elegant curves and ridges of the mandelbulb suggest a rich picture frame, what catches my eye and makes me say, “Son of da Vinci!” is the background imagery on the right-hand side, middle to top.  It’s the sort of painterly touch that one often sees in renaissance portraits like the Mona Lisa; misty, hazy panoramic landscape.

Dodgeball with Flash Gordon by Sitting Duck

Maybe the “painterly” style is just the preference for subtle shading and the appearance of natural light.  I have no idea who Sitting Duck is.  I think he’s one of the many new names drawn into the Fractalforums.com orbit through their recent contest.  If so, then the contest has been a success.  This image reminds me of the many sci-fi fantasy paintings done by Frank Frazetta back when that sort of thing was popular, that is, before the advent of CGI when fantasy became reality.  I like the overexposed areas of bright light and of course the multiple shades of rusty brown that would have caused even Da Vinci to start using a bigger palette –the old-fashioned, non-indexed type.

For which of his paintings would Frank Frazetta have ever have written a description like this:

Mandelbulb 3d DEcombinate of: Amazing+Surf Quaternion+CommQuat+IdesFormula | Bulbox+_AmazingBoxSSE2
Same as “Shiny bug transfixed by entomological pin” http://fav.me/d69ot6g but from another angle.

Truly, “Painting with Fractals” puts us in a completely different league.  And language group, too.

Eat your Veggies! by indavisual

This one caught my eye for what is probably the most important aspect of the painterly style for fractal art: creativity.  The painterly style challenges the opposing style of precise, slick rendering.  The painterly style is a reminder that art is a matter of impression and not precise, diagrammatic or photographic depiction.  We applaud the skill of painters when they paint something that evokes great thoughts and feelings, but when a talented painter paints a great photograph and imitates a camera, then who cares?

This one really shows how the distorting effects of whatever this guy did to this mandelbulb image can create something new and different where sticking to just the parameter settings of the program would yield something much more commonplace.  The painterly style could be described as semi-destructive or even sloppy.  The impressionist painters were described that way not because they actually were sloppy but because that’s how their work appeared when placed in the more established context of the (overly) realistic style of painting that came before them.  Compared to a photograph, even the Mona Lisa would look “smudgy.”  On it’s own, almost anyone can begin to see the artistry to such works as this one by indavisual (nice, multi-expressive screen name).

And that’s what fractal art as opposed to fractal science is all about:  artistry.  Of course it’s not too easy to define what is artistry and what is merely tech-nistry, but it’s worth loosening the bolts on one’s mind once in a while and seeing what comes from a more expanded visual range.

100511_by_pasternak

Rembrant-ish, but more than that.  The radiating details that draw our eyes into the smudgy shadows are beyond the sort of hypnagogic visions that Rembrant’s own shadowlands ever depicted.  Hypnagogic means just before you fall asleep.  And Turner, too.  This has all the subtle light shades and murky shallows of a Turner seascape with clouds, dying twilight and those things that only the eyes understand.

Calligraphy mountain by wackwang

From the fractalforums.com gallery page:

Description: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wackwang007/The calligraphy of Chinese characters as single elements, expressed the relationship between global and local, which is the calligraphy and fractal embodied.And I make it feel like Traditional Chinese painting as a form of expression.

This is not really a painterly example, strictly speaking, but the cellphone signature chop mark combined with the fractal cloud/mountain/trees structure does evoke a strong resemblance to Chinese art as the artist intended it to do tying it in closely to more traditional, non-digital imagery.  I missed the 2d barcode (red mark) at first and only on closer examination realized it wasn’t a traditional Chinese signature stamp.

Hardwired Transcendence Engine by egress

Smooth rendering and, once again, the smudgy-ness are the beginnings of painterly style.  Of course you still need an interesting image and composition and all those other serious art things.  The swirly cables/wires and steel parts forms a nice composition as well as something with a little bit of a realistic touch that allows us to begin to think we know what we’re looking at when in fact we’ve been drawn into something strange and other-worldly.  The cables in the bottom right are really fantastic.  They look quite hand drawn although I’m sure it’s just the careful rendering selection that makes them look that way.  This one looks like maybe it took some time to render.  Does an airbrush count as a painterly tool?

Orbit Mandelbrot No. 2 by element90

The Buddhabrot is always quite a painterly looking construction so one has to really do something special to produce an exceptionally painterly looking one and element90 has done that here.  It looks like parchment or skin or maybe thin aluminium.  But the reddish/burgundy shade which takes over in the smaller parts starts to suggest leather.  Or is it a recursive construction of old “pop-top” pop can tabs?  One can never be sure what the audience sees when looking at fractal art.  Just be glad someone is looking is all.

ATALANTA_FUGIENS_by_bo_dion

A detail from a painting by Escher?  Once again, subtle shading from various degrees of combinations and permutations of light –isn’t that 90% of what oil painting is? — light?  I like the combination of the sphere with the triangular shapes and squares.  One would almost think it was a deliberate attempt by the artist to suggest a round square or something alchemical like that when in fact it’s a deliberate output from the formula.  Of course the selection of this scene was the artist’s choice.  Selection is a big part of fractal art.

Cliffs of Antartica by Kali

From the fractalforums.com gallery page:

Description: Experimental Kaliset heightfield render.
Based on Knighty’s Mandelbrot heightfield implementation included in the latest Fragmentarium version.

This is exquisitely painterly.  Hard to believe it’s machine made, but then Kali has magical powers when it comes to working with machines like Fragmentarium.  If this was a painting it would be acrylic: bright, modern and powerful.  Colors da Vinci could only have dreamed of.  Although, I think one would detect some mixed-media accents in the form of sketched-in outlines and structural markings.  This could be pen and ink or pen and airbrush.  See what I mean about Kali’s sophisticated rendering methods?

MengerKoch23hrddh_4 by ellenm1

Ellenm1 has a rather interesting collection of mandelbulb images on Flickr.  This one I find to be the most painterly of the lot, however there’s a few other that remind me of Bosch and other famous painters not because of the lighting alone, but also because of the creative composition and un-precise, warped fractal imagery.  To me, this is a face, the bottom being a monstrous mouth while the top morphs into a cut-away cranial dome.  There are almost brushstrokes in some of the lip-things at the bottom.  It’s refreshingly fluid and non-squarish.  Perhaps that’s another painterly principle.

tumblr_mjsuarRvm71rswrhdo1_1280 by jakeronomicon

To see a world in a grain of sand… or in this case, a world on a shelf.  If this was a drawer in a museum, it would be labelled “sunset”.  This is the kind of image that gets written off as a preliminary render but is in fact quite an advancement over the more complex, precisely rendered kind of thing.  Perhaps that’s because the artist, Jacob Bettany has only been working with fractals for less than a year and hasn’t picked up the bad habit of only making crisp scientific images with a fractal program.  To render this more would be to render it less.  To render this more carefully would be to render it more crudely.  To render this richly would be to render it worthless.

94bf751edf4f11e2af4522000a1f8f13_7 by Jacob Bettany

This one’s off Jacob Bettany’s Instagram site, a service I’ve got very little experience with but looks very art-friendly in its format.  Although clearly a mandelbulb derivative, this image does not seem to suggest zooming into it any more than one would step closer to a canvas hanging on a wall to take in the brushstrokes.  I like the color and the flatness to this one.  Flatness is something often neglected in 3d fractals.  This would be a watercolor if it were a real painting.

Well, there’s plenty more I could show here but I think you get the idea of what the “painterly” style is all about and how it works.  Hopefully more artists will take up the smudgy, over-exposed, flat and shadowy style a little more.  Sometimes it takes real genius to see just how simple, and how simply made, good art can be.  Especially in such a technology-laden, expert-heavy genre as fractal art where it’s much easier to make perfect photos than it is to make unique and stylish artwork.

Our brains need a vacation.  And what could be a better Brain Resort than the electronic paradises of the fractal realm.  Here’s a sampler of some of the most interesting fractal scenery and composite images I’ve stumbled upon over the last few months.

Although we’ve already arrived at our electronic destination, let’s do the old-fashioned pre-electronic drive to the airport.  We pass through some new construction downtown via the expressway:

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

Ship by Dominique_Peronino

Dominique chose to call this a ship for some reason, but I’ve been looking at it in my Viewmarks collection for more than a few months and I always see a new highrise in the making.  In fact, when driving down the downtown expressway now I’m reminded of this image when I see any highrise in its early construction phases.  Life is starting to imitate fractal art.

These sorts of 3D jackposts and concrete floor images are quite common now but this one is special because it looks like more than just the regular tube and slab stuff.  The sky background might have played a role in transforming it although it seems to be just a simple gradient.

shattered_sphere_by_haltenny

Something strange and astronomical is going up at the airport it looks like.  Haltenny has always been something of a pioneer in the 3D fractal world.  I suppose this one isn’t all that pioneering in the technical sense but I’ve never seen such an interesting concrete ball structure as this.  It almost looks like a fossilized thing with those embedded circular structures.  Or is it more like a semi-constructed stone Death Star?

subterranean_city_by_haltenny

Looks like Haltenny got the contract to do the parking garage too.  It really pays to explore fractals, 3D or otherwise, because that’s how I’m sure people like Haltenny find these sorts of things while others seem to just find what’s already been found.  Images like this really renew one’s excitement with 3D fractals.  It seems like there’s always something new waiting around the corner.  That aspect to fractal art is still the same.

My Home Town by Frakkie

Uh oh.  I don’t think we’re in the parking garage anymore.  We’re in the Twilight Zone where reality and fractals meet.  It happens in the realms of electronica that airports are grown, not made.  This is proto-airport and the runways will be the lava beds once they’ve cooled.  There will be no need for planes because all the departures will be arrivals: your itinerary is written on a mobius strip.

It’s a neat image, not really a super technical feat or anything, but just for the artistic impression which is what counts in all this really whether you’re aware of that or not.  What I like is that the imagery really does suggest a sort of half-real, half drafting board state.  It hasn’t finished calculating yet but we’re here already.  The crisp contrasts are very digital and yet the lighting also gives the image a very vivid depth and realistic feel to it.

light_at_end_of_tunnel_by_mario837

Yikes.  Ample parking means walking a few miles to the terminal.  I’m so glad this is all electronic and nothing is ever more than a mouse-click away.  And no baggage either.  In fact, I’m sitting in my basement with barefeet.  What’s so special about this one?  The simple depth and perspective is done well.  Also, it has the feel of the outside and yet it’s inside.  A sort of interior exterior.  It looks like snow has fallen on a shallow river bed but how can it snow inside a tunnel like this?  A nice example of how 3d fractals can conjure up some extraordinary scenes.  Like Escher’s work; impossible scenes that just look natural.

Plaza Organica 7 by Tom Wilcox

Similar in some respects but having a very different feel.  The full-size version really shows the smooth, almost abstracted style to this image.  Abstracted?  You see how hard it is to tell what reality is on these electronic vacations?  Isn’t it all abstract?  Also, as a side note, I found this one via Haltenny’s Deviant Art favorites list.  A good favorites list is the best way to browse Deviant Art.

Tom is well known for his very polished and refined style of fractals of which the image above is a good example.  This is from his deviantART page:

And now for our in-flight dream…

i_was_dreaming____by_dorianoart

I declare the birth of a new fractal genre: Dorianoscape; in honour of Doriano Benaglia who is the unrivaled master and inventor of the art form.  Encore!  Encore!  …here it is:

thelestus_by_dorianoart

Panoramic; timeless; digital surf crashing on the pixel-grained beach.  Note the subtle horizon touches like the hills on the left and the little star in the middle.  He doesn’t just slap these things together, he composes them.

The dream continues…

ipolemon_3_by_dorianoart

The images have this effortless quality to them and yet they are also uncommon and unique.  Artists make art and you can recognize the artist from the art, but in the fractal world I’m sorry to say that the technology is what really makes the art and we are more likely to recognize the software than the artist by looking at the art.  But not with Dorianoscapes.  500 years from now when someone finds an unknown Dorianoscape on a vintage 21st century usb stick unearthed during renovations of an old villa, it will be immediately recognized as the originator’s handiwork and not one of the thousands of imitators who I’m sure are bound to spring up in the years to come.

MB3D_0474 by  0Encrypted0

This one is a real masterwork in the sense that it’s rich with all sorts of details as well as having a strong overall composition to it and multiple impressive themes like shadow lands; bubble worlds; majestic heights; and more if you study it longer.  It’s not a typical work for Encrypted who usually makes very intricate, jewelled 3D fractals.  This one is very painterly and full of smudgy suggestion and panoramic silence.  You know,  maybe fractal art really will become a rich art form.  All it needs is a few people with that special skill of working with its special machinery.  Encrypted’s got it.  Let’s hope more people will find it too.

Cendria by lxh

This one looks old-fashioned to me.  I noted some similarity it had with an old photograph on Wikipedia that I stumbled on:

Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre (1838)

It’s the roof lines, chimneys and evestroughing of this photograph of Paris in 1838.  (Actually, a daguerreotype, an early form of photography.)  Interestingly, this photo is perhaps the oldest one showing a living person according to the Wikipedia author.  Only the man getting his shoes shined (left-foreground) showed up in this long exposure while all the other people and street traffic disappeared in a blur of (relatively ) fast movement.  Lxh’s image takes us up to the chimney tops (where troubles melt like lemon drops) and we exchange the rest of the Parisian cityscape for fields of clouds in the sunshine.

Fractal Rock by Axolotl

The Ayers Rock of fractaland.  More photoshop than fractal but the importance of the mandelbulb sitting off in the distance is great enough in this image to make it “fractal” (whatever that really means).  Nice use of lighting and all that serious art technique stuff.  Axolotl must know something about making artwork because this sort of thing doesn’t come naturally.  Do you feel like walking in the sun like the woman; or do you feel like sitting in the shade like the man?  Couldn’t he at least drive her over to the Fractal Rock?  And what’s with that steel umbrella that looks like a covered serving platter?  A nice early use of composite imagery (Mar. 2011) that has stood the test of time and still looks good despite how retro the mandelbulb now looks to all of us.

the_toyota_annunciation_sexton_blake_magritte_by_aegiandyad

I think this is just a filtered and processed photo that resulted in something cool looking.  I throw it in because it fits with the electronic vacation and what exactly is the difference really between fractal art and all the other digital stuff, exactly?  Don’t know who Magritte is?  Those title allusions are just extras.  The image creates its own fantastic context. (“Better” than Magritte?)

Here’s something Magritt-ey:

Rain of Pain by CO99A5

Why pain?  I guess the dark sky and dark below-sky (not really land) suggest dark things.  Rene Magritte liked to include stark geometry into his nicely pained images.  Nowadays we like to include nicely painted images with our stark geometry.  If Magritte were alive today he’s be laughing!  And he’d be out of a job, too.  Buried alive by the style he created.  Hey, that’s painful.

What’s a vacation without a hotel?  And if electronic hotels have hand made paintings on the wall, then real hotels must have electronic paintings on their walls.  And who knows electified art better than Zone Patcher?  But first the art:

Reappearance of Ancient Luminous Connections by Zone Patcher

From Zone Patcher’s Flickr notes:

….SOLD….to The Park, New Delhi…..boutique Hotel company…everything inna da rooms will be white..everyting..except…my Fractal Collages…heee..

And here’s the hotel room ($140/night):

Room photo, from The Park Hotels, Goa, website

Of course our electronic itinerary includes a lot more artwork, but you’ll have to sleep on the floor (your own floor).  They weren’t kidding about everything in the room being white.  That big black box thing with the mail slot is a drop safe, I think.

bye_bye_maria_elena_by_mario837

Nice simple straight-forward image made in Fractal Explorer using a Sterlingware formula that would look nice in any high class hotel.  Fractals are the ultimate public art since they’re decorative and completely lacking any sort of real world connection that could lead to them becoming politically incorrect sometime in the future or even later this day.  Look hard at this one and try as much as you can to be offended by it.  It just can’t happen.  The title is a reference to the recent passing away of the beloved singer Maria Elena Walsh.

Since Goa is a short walk from downtown Europe in the fractal realm, let’s visit some of the cultural wonders amidst the electronic cafes (bring your own coffee).

MB3D_0563_hd by 0Encrypted0

Another fresh view of the 3D mandel-things.  Note how it gets Escher-esque on the far right and how the structures vary from straight to curved and from golden to soot-covered.  Such a rich variety of things in this one.  Is it an electrical station or a steel making factory?  Or a clock tower?

MB3D_0554_hd by 0Encrypted0

Like great symphonies, 0Encrypted0 (that’s how he writes it) gives them simple, unassuming numbers.  This one really is a symphony of imagery.  I really like the left side wall of shelf things and its lighting especially, and then the depth to which the top right moves off to.  This one is strangely panoramic although everything appears to be inside and enclosed.  It’s a city of cities within a city.

MB3D_0575_hd by 0Encrypted0

I rarely pay much attention to the names on images like this posted to Fractalforums.com.  I just bookmark the ones that look great and so it’s by accident that I’ve reviewed three in a row here by the same artist.  This one is a fantastic example of rich design in a 3D fractal.  It must have really boggled the mind of 0Encrypted0 when he found it.  The square areas act like frames and similar to the photography theme of memory boxes, wooden boxes with all sort of inner partitions each one holding some different object or curio.  The description note says: “Amazing Surf CrossBiFold _RotatedFolding _FoldingTetra3d“.  And that’s a pretty good description, too.

ModularNexus II by MarkJayBee

I must have gotten off at the wrong subway stop because everyone speaks English here.  There are no signs in the electronic worlds because you’re always “here”.  This was just posted a few months ago and shows how Mark’s painterly style has not been a one time thing (like a mistaken keystroke).  I don’t know if they’re tearing this down or building it up.  But then, what does any of that mean in a place of virtual reality?  There’s a million shades of brown here; some suggesting rust and others polished granite.  There’s the big palace up top in the sunshine being built, but then there’s the grim, subterranean foundations holding it up.  Someday writers might actually write novels for specific pieces of cover art.  Do e-books really have covers?

architectura_naturalis_by_vidom

These images go so well together I don’t know whether he added the photography to the fractal or vice versa.  Here’s what Vidom says:

Here I made a single layer fractal architecture, where my main goal was using fog settings to achieve a glassy-windows appearance on the right lower part.
Testing some of my photographs to choose a simple sky, I instead decided to set a natural lush ambiance, with a single photo of a pond I took in a Milan park.
The fractal itself isn’t changed but it’s quite hidden now, so it’s in manipulations category.

By the way, Vidom’s entire deviantART gallery is a vacation all its own with all sorts of panoramic and intense mechanical constructions combined.  He also posts very high resolution images so you can wander around the image the same way you can with large works of art in an art gallery.  He should charge for admission because it’s better than Disneyland.  Each image is almost a virtual day trip in itself.

pythagorean_gardens_and_village_by_vidom

This is perhaps the most detailed panoramic 3D fractal I’ve ever seen.  The original is 2300 x 1380 px and to me resembles a sports stadium the size of an entire planet.  Vidom says this: It suffered a lot with resizing, it went from 65MB to 2.2MB, but it’s still interesting even with less details.”

It’s something worth noting that this image was made with the same software as every other Mandelbulb3D image.  The sky and the cloud-shadows on the “seating”  (left of center)  were added, I assume, but it really shows how operating the machinery is the key skill in fractal art.  If it weren’t a skill then why do some people come up with things like this repeatedly and others don’t?  The creative process is different in fractal art than it is in the traditional hand-made genres.  The paint brushes have a mind of their own.

Well, it’s time to leave.  Let’s head back to the hotel lobby to sneak check out:

unspoken_reverie_by_vidom

Even the greatest hotels of reality-land can’t compare with the Vidom Hiltons of fractaland.  Consider this lobby-scape of the Burj Al Arab in Dubai ($1500/night):

Bird’s eye view of the lobby of the Burj Al Arab in Dubai

I don’t see anyone at the main desk so I guess they don’t care if I leave without paying my bill…

I get a window seat on the plane and take these photos on arrival back home.  Something’s happened since I left.

bbrot1 by William Brodie-Tyrell

bbrot5 by William Brodie-Tyrell

bbrot3 by William Brodie-Tyrell

I found these buddhabrot images via a posting on Fractalforums.com recently, but I think they may date from 2004 if they’re of the same vintage as most of the other stuff on the original site.

Reality can be edited in fractaland.  I quite like this one.  The effect is great even though the parts put together are quite ordinary.

Fractal by Alizadeh100

Fractaland, it’s just a click away.

Yes, fellow patients, and particularly those in the line-up waiting for shock-treatment, we are sometimes gripped by that psychotic condition which I would label, “fractalsport”.

What is fractalsport?  You know what fractalsport is and are exhibiting its symptoms right now with your attempts to deny it.  For those of you whose brains are still effervescing from shock-treatment, fractalsport is the making and posting of fractal art for the purposes of competition and taking part in competition rather than the simple, straight-forward pursuit of fractal art for normal, healthy, well-adjusted  reasons.

Since I understand the mental state of those afflicted by this condition better than they do, let me avoid enraging you with medical terms and just show you a picture:

The precursor of all fractal art contests

Note particularly the spiral decorated top spinning off the board and into our laps.  Spirals were made for fractalsport and epitomize it: fast, attractive and begging to be spun.

I hope this next image isn’t too much of a sudden shock to the system:

Yes, they even had usernames back in the proto-fractalsport era

Any website or web-space can be quickly converted into such an arena-o-art as this with the sudden announcement of “contest” or, for those who are in a profound state of fractalsport and more accustomed to degenerative street language,  “compo”

Now that we’ve come to acknowledge our diseased state of mind and the pathology of our art form, let’s look and see what the latest “compo” has inspired and forget about seeking medical treatment.  In the words of Dostoyevsky: My art is bad, well–let it get worse!   Hey, I’m feeling better already.

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

Mariana Trench by Aqualoop

I’ve never heard of the user, Aqualoop, so this is a double-prize: new art and a new artist.  If that’s the case then this latest outbreak of fractalsport is having some beneficial effects; just like a high fever killing off one’s malarial infection.  What do I like about this image?  I find it to be Dali-esque.  If Salvador Dali, the great surrealist painter was to take up fractals, I think this is the sort of thing he’d get excited about.  The melted, distorted look is almost a “Persistence of Fractals”.  The lonely, barren, sun scoured landscape in the top-left corner also suggests to me the mark of the master himself.  Then there’s the embyonic forms floating around and the overall fluid, flowing feeling connecting such small scale items with large scale things like a spiral galaxy in the mid-right.

This image is a good example of how subtle fractal art can be and how it can strongly appeal to one person, like myself, and possibly not appeal at all to many others.  I’m going to be quite disappointed if the Aqualoop battling-top gets bounced off the board by another.  But that’s the way of the compo.  It always happens that the real art gets trodden on by the imitations.

It Happened by arteandreas

Philosophically speaking, I really ought to dislike these images made from combining realistic elements with fractal ones but something in my mind keeps overruling that other sense of propriety and good taste.  Perhaps it’s because this one has such a great narrative to suggest: a meeting of the digital and the real; the portal to the parameter worlds.

When you want to tell a story you don’t need much to illustrate it if it’s a good one.  A little nudge is all the reader/viewer needs to have.  I suspect these composite images are going to be much more common than they were in the old days before 3D rendering.  3D fractals seem to mix better with our inherently 3D realistic world imagery.

Friends: Fractolotl and Octofractalpus meet in the garden by Lambarie

Yeah?  So what.  I like it.  Now let’s try to figure out why.  I’m not too excited about the yellow snail or the bright orange fern-thingies on the axolotl creature (it’s a long story, the axolotl thing –and category).  But the grainy gold, blurry-layered, spiral creature bits have some dreamy quality to it.  And the garbage UF style over-layered background normally makes me gag but this time, combined with the goldy swirls, transcends the usual reverse peristalsic outcome from such workings and becomes something that I’ve actually been staring at for some time now.  Maybe it’s because the smeary background resembles the background of a microscope slide and that sets a new context –discovery– for the golden creatures.  Have I failed another Rorschach test?

Mr. Crabs nebula by Knighty

The buddhabrot is like a lobotomy: bold and simple, it never fails.  In fact, all the buddhabrot formula needs is some good coloring, which is what knighty has introduced here.  Or as he says: “Just experimenting with Metropolis Hastings method for rendering the buddhabrot and thought that one is good enough for participating in the compo. Hope you like it.”  The buddhabrot deserves an entry category all its own.  Knighty has always had a good sense of color.

Brahmabrot Ganeshi Nilgiri by Alef

Brahma-brot?  Hey, expect the unexpected from Alef.  I’ve always liked his simple renderings which allow the fractal formula to do the drawing.  He’s done something special here with the formula.  Since I don’t understand what it is, I’ll let him explain:

Description: Multi layer and part render of my buddhabrot version aka brahmabrot of  mandelbrot set with subtracted unit vector.
z=z^2+c
z=z – 0.375*z/|z|

Really this weren’t meant to be a winner, it’s meant to be good contest entry.

NOTICE: Now its OK.

p.s.
Pervij n.

Although I think the buddhabrot is a 2D formula, it’s always had a sort of 3D appearance even when rendered in 2D.  I’m not surprised to see someone like Alef experimenting with variations as, like I said before, the buddhabrot deserves its own category because it produces such rich and intense imagery.

Waves by Phtolo

I’m impressed more with fractal art that looks raw and alien rather than with the stuff that’s touched up and skillfully presented.  Maybe that’s because it’s more fractal or because it’s less human and therefore more unexpected.  There’s a style that comes with such arbitrary imagery that is captured in the wild and never domesticated.   Maybe most fractal artists don’t really like fractals? Phtolo I’m guessing is another newcomer to the scene although one can never really know when it comes to usernames.  The sense of wilderness which a turbulent seascape exemplifies is certainly in this image but the fractalness of it adds a strange sense of order, deliberation and primordial thinking to the scene.  Each wave is doing its own thing and reaching out for something to pull back into itself.  Does that sound crazy?

The Circus at the End of Time by Brummbaer

Another fine example of how small realistic elements can act like a spark setting off a whole new impression in your mind.  But didn’t I say I was more impressed with the raw, untouched stuff?  But this is what makes the incorporation of realistic elements such an artistic challenge.  You have to find something that fits with the fractal and when combined creates synergy, something that works with and multiplies the effect of the other.  Also, incorporating other elements doesn’t have the same graphically distorting result that global effects do.  Brummbaer is pretty good at this delicate job of sparking the image.  Are those hills in the background really clouds?  Isn’t it winter?  Or some kind of fifth season?  I hear music.

Description: The Circus at the End of Time
When you get closer to the circus you will find a door that says:
The Magic Theatre, for madmen only – price of admission, your mind.   (Steppenwolf by Herrman Hesse)

Well, there you go.  According to Fractalforums.com the compo closes for entries at the end of May and then the “voting” (whatever that means) starts.  But in the world of fractal art the game never ends!  Competitions come and go and the losers always win.  Let’s hear it for the next bunch of winners.

First, let me explain.  I make such a bold statement not because I hate fractals (or fractal artists) but because I love fractals and include myself among the hopelessly deluded.

A quaint anecdote

I came to this realization in a rather unexpected way: through rediscovering the joy of fractal artistry.

For the last year or so all I’ve been doing as far as fractals are concerned was merely reviewing other people’s artwork as well as attempting to understand and explain fractal art from a theoretical, art criticism, point of view.  I hadn’t really been making any artwork myself for over a year.  Then just this past weekend I rediscovered the joy of fractal artistry.

Like most computers mine has a screensaver and like all screensavers they only display when you’ve stopped using the computer for some length of time.  Only then, when you’re not using them do they appear.  From time to time my computer would start drawing Lyapunov fractals in a screensaver called  XLyap by Ron Record (1997).   I had never thought Lyapunovs were very creative until I saw them rendered in the primitive, colored greyscale method of XLap.  I became re-enthused with Lyapunovs after seeing their  artistic potential demonstrated.

I was already somewhat familiar with Lyapunovs from using Sterlingware, that great fractal program by Stephen Ferguson.  I remembered the Lyapunov formula section in Sterlingware and thought it might be worth checking out one more time because if this screensaver, XLyap from 1997 could make interesting stuff out of Lyapunov fractals, then surely that powerful troika of: me, Sterlingware and a graphics program, could do even better.

The Fractal State of California 1865

While rediscovering the secret joys of fractal exploration with the many Lyapunov parameter options in Sterlingware (never underestimate a simple fractal program) I came to realize (that is, re-realize) just how much fun fractal art is to make and at the very same time (still over-analyzing everything) just how cut off from all this fun-factor the audience of fractal art must be.  This became rather obvious when I reflected on the excitement of exploring these wonderfully irregular and asymmetrical Lyapunov fractals.  It also became obvious when I saw that my mass of saved images was becoming a fractal “rock collection.”

How can fractals be so engrossing to make and yet look so awkward as art?

Awkward, because surely, to an outsider, that is, someone not initiated into the arcane world of fractal graphics, it’s all just technological weirdness (“Awesome! How did you make that?”).  I mean, they’re not something like a portrait painting or a misty morning photograph of “park bench and trees” that makes almost anyone stop and make an instant emotional connection with the intent of the artist who made it.  Fractals are more like Rorschach tests and the viewer’s reaction says more about their own insanity than that of the artist’s.

I see a crushed butterfly, and my first grade teacher

So what does that suggest about fractal art as an art form?  (More analyzing)  It suggests something disturbing which I’ve sensed for some years now: the audience for fractal art is fractal artists.  And when some of those fractal artists get together and try to get the rest of the world to discover fractals and “see the light”  they unwittingly reveal the depth of their own narcissism and the subsequent flood of delusional thinking that causes them to believe that all people from every tribe and tongue will join them in worshipping fractals if only we can distract them for a moment and get them to look at some really great examples of fractal art.  The promotion of fractals as an art form requires religious zeal and a faith in fractals that transcends reality and is able to calmly walk across the coals of art criticism (and self-criticism).  Why else would anyone push this stuff?

The Metropolitan Museum of Mental Art

Back to reality.  Fractals are the Rorschach Tests of our generation but since in our generation everyone is an authority, the diagnostic tests have been developed by the mental patients instead of the doctors and being crazy, we, the patients, have hung them on the wall as art instead of hanging them on the end of our hospital bed as charts that display the severity of our disease.

The deserted shore Sinbad was stranded on

I suggest a name change:  since fractal art is really rock collecting and rock collectors call themselves “rock hounds” let”s stop calling ourselves fractal artists and instead use the term, “Fractal Hound”.  For example: The Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Hound Exhibition.  Our official symbol won’t be a spiral it’ll be a wheel barrow.

In case I’ve failed to make a coherent point in this posting, let me end with something straightforward: fractal artists (I mean hounds) need to take themselves a lot less seriously.  We have an oddball art form that doesn’t do what most art does.  It’s a niche art form and appeals to the typical niche dwelling life forms like spiders and cockroaches.  Our audience is us.  Your audience is you.  And it wouldn’t surprise me if my audience is me.And now, back to staring in the pool.

With 3D printing technology, fractal art can cheaply and easily enter the domain of sculpture.  It’s an exciting development and offers the ever dazzling world of fractals another venue in which to capture that proverbial and elusive, “mainstream” audience.  Will this be fractal art’s big break or just another demonstration of how hard it is for “normal” people to relate to fractals?  But first a little explanation of the technology.

They call it 3D “printing” because the objects are built up, layer by layer, from the bottom to the top.  This is “additive” rather than the old fashioned “subtractive” method of carving out the object from a block of material like they do in machine shops.  There are various 3D printing processes, some resemble an inkjet print head or laser plotter moving around quickly adding layer after layer of 3d pixel bricks while other methods fuse the powder in a large sand pile into smooth, delicate pieces with the precision of a master craftsman.  (Here’s two basic links for more info: Wikipedia: 3D Printing, and a very good Economist article.)

Naturally it all starts with a 3D digital model.  And although I’m sure there’s got to be some limitations as to what you can make with 3D “prints”; such as you can’t have parts of the model floating in mid-air; it looks like the only real limitation is your imagination.  That is, what you can dream up in a 3D digital program.

Here’s where fractals have the real advantage: what could be a greater source of 3D dreams and imaginative works than 3D fractals?  What could be a more exciting and better use of this custom sculpture technology than rendering the kind of complex and beautiful 3D fractals we’ve seen fractal artists making for years?

Consider what this new technology means:  Isn’t it just like the early days when fractals were first graphically rendered –in 2D?  That was the great debut of 2D fractals and this is the same historical event but now in the much more sophisticated medium of 3D.  Fractal art has now moved into the medium of sculpture and would it be premature to expect it to take on a much more radical popularity?  Who can come up with more amazing, and a much more prolific amount, of 3D objects than a fractal artist?

Jeremie Brunet (aka bib) has been posting photos on Fractalforums.com of his recent 3D prints made at Shapeways.com, one of the leading 3D printing companies.  Shapeways will render your 3D image file and also give you a gallery on their site so you can exhibit it and even sell them to the public, just like Deviant Art does for artists with 2D prints.

When I first saw Jeremie’s photos on Fractalforums I thought they were just digital images using a new photo realistic rendering technique.  As we all know, 3D digital art can look pretty realistic these days but as it turns out his photo realistic images were real photographs of real objects, some of which were sitting in his hand.  I think it was the sight of that hand that started me thinking, “What the what?”

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

3D printed fractal by Jeremie Brunet (in the Master’s hand) posted to Fractalforums.com

3D printed fractal by Jeremie Brunet

3D printed fractal by Jeremie Brunet

Box Pillar, 3D printed fractal by Jeremie Brunet

There’s a lot more by Jeremie in this post, Shapeways for 3D printed fractals. Some are metallic and others, like the Box Pillar above, show you how detailed and “fractal” the images –sculptures, really– are.  It literally is the equivalent of printing out a fractal image in 3-dimensional form.  You can see more of Jeremie’s sculptures at his Shapeways.com account.  In fact, you can buy your own copies of some for as little as $6!  Buy some before he becomes famous.

Infinitely replicating slugs of ignorance – Fractal Sculpture by Kraftwerk

Jeremie isn’t the only one getting into this.  Here’s an excellent example by Kraftwerk (aka Mandelwerk, Johan Andersson).  Fractals should have the potential to be the Michelangelos of 3D printing because no other method creates such intricate and novel objects with such ease and in such quantity.  Compare the 3D print above with the original, “virtual” 3D image below:

The infinitely replicating slugs of ignorance and the false revelations induced by their phlegmatic movements by Kraftwerk

Although the 3D “print” isn’t as rich and nuanced as the original image, it does illustrate how the aesthetic qualities of 3D fractals can be transferred to a 3D printed object.  And the process is only going to get better –and cheaper.  A fractal on every coffee table –or hanging from every rear-view mirror like CDs were back in the 80s.

Here’s a short, two minute video from Shapeways.com showing how their 3D printing process works and how it can work for you:

My favorite bit in the Shapeways video is where they lift the finished products out of the sand.  It was like seeing buried treasure being uncovered.  Your 3D files and Shapeway’s machine can turn that industrial sand pile of theirs into a never ending archaeological treasure hunt in the Valley of the Kings.

Of course fractals aren’t the only thing that’s being “printed” there.  But like I said in my introduction: what could compare to the visual wonders of 3D fractals?  They’re sculptures; mathematical masterpieces that you can hold in your hands.  They’re things that no human mind has imagined or could imagine.  What is there in the world of 3D printing that could possibly rival fractals for the top spot?  What could turn the heads of anyone once they’ve stumbled upon the mathematical majesty of 3D fractals?

How about My Little Pony?  Yeah, look at this:

Art category from the front page of Shapeways.com

And skulls.  Who wants to look at the wonders of math made flesh when they can oogle over an ornately carved human skull?  Fascinating, isn’t it?  It’s this apotheosis of mediocrity that really struck me when I visited Shapeways.com: 3D printing hasn’t changed a thing for fractal art.  It’s still the same old world where people’s attention is monopolized by trivial things and stuff they’ve all seen before.  What in the Sam Hill is wrong with society?

Now of course Shapeways isn’t trying to promote “art” they’re really just trying to promote art sales, that is, sales of the 3D objects exhibited on their site.  It’s just like Deviant Art going out of their way to get visitors to buy prints of the artwork they’re browsing and thereby convert as many of their visitor stats into art sales.  Shapeways is a business.  But so is just about every art gallery, too.  Art has always been commercial.

I think Shapeways can give us a little insight into how fractal art fits into the rest of the art world by virtue of how much or how little they showcase 3D fractals over 3D skulls and 3D cartoon characters.  For what it’s worth, in the “Art” category image above, fractals, or at least something geometrical, has equal billing with My Little Pony.  Let’s look at some other 3D printing categories:

From Shapeways.com

Fractals have intricate detail but apparently there aren’t any on Shapeways to compete with Loser Man, or spinning tops (are they geometric?), little cars and the inevitable cartoon bunnies.  How about another category?  Can I have the envelope please…

From Shapeways.com

Oh!  “Featured Picks” and not one a fractal or anything geometry-like.  Just a Steve Jobs Lego-like head, an iPhone case (kinda fracktally) and, well, who cares what those other two things are?  Perhaps Shapeways is trying to feature the capabilities of their 3D printing technology more than the quality of the items that can be made?  Even still, wouldn’t Jeremie Brunet’s second image, the geometric cauliflower thing be a much more impressive example of 3D printing?  Or is Shapeways more interested in showing how –ordinary– the output is?  How it can be like: all those cool things you’ve seen before.

What next?

From Shapeways.com

Jewellery holds some promise for fractals, I think, based on the geometric, curio-type objects being showcased there.  What could be more “curio” than 3D fractals?

From Shapeways.com

Check it out for yourself, but so far I think the audience for 3D fractal printing is going to be the same audience that already exists for 2D prints.  Despite the inherent qualities of 3D fractals to astound and amaze in 3D format, most of the world still seems more interested in the things that they’re familiar with and have an established presence in the traditional arts and crafts world, such as skulls, cartoon characters and mobile phone cases (the tie-clips of our time).

Is there something about fractals that makes them too odd and weird to ever have mass appeal?  I get the impression that fractals are something that most people have an immediate but brief interest in and can’t get interested in on any sort of deeper or more lasting level because their appearance is inherently artificial, synthetic and unnatural looking and for that reason lacks the warmth and attraction of real world objects and imagery.

It looks like fractals are still a niche art form and always will be; whether they’re in two-dimensions or three.  But maybe it’s too early to render such a verdict?  Could there still be a massive invasion of 3D fractals into the mainstream world?

Watch the skies!  Watch the coffee tables!

From the developer’s, Tim Day’s site:

Fracplanet is an interactive tool for creating random fractal planets and terrain areas with oceans, rivers, lakes and icecaps. The results can be exported as models to POV-Ray and to Blender, or as texture maps for more general usage. The code is licensed under the GPL. It uses Qt and OpenGL.

At the Sourceforge project page for Fracplanet, where you can download the program, this note, by Tim Day:

I’ve been using various versions of fracplanet for sometime now, and it’s extremely useful in creating planets. What you can use the program for is quite varied.

“What you can use the program for is quite varied.”  With that begins our x-ray of art.  Zzzz-zap!

But one more software detail.  I tried out Fracplanet with the hope that it might do what Terraform, another little project for drawing landscapes, used to do.  I say “used to do” because it no longer seems to be available as it’s been abandoned and no longer kept up to date with the latest compiling and other technical software things that are beyond my own reach and expertise at present –the versions are old and won’t run on the latest Linux releases.

Terraform could render eerie, x-ray moonscapes with relative ease.  Terragen, the well-known and highly capable landcape renderer, seems in-capable of doing this.  Why?

To put it into technical, graphical terms:  Why is wire-frame rendering not seen as the most important and best artistic use of a fractal terrain generator?

To most readers the answer is painfully obvious.  Who wants to look at wire frame imagery?  The whole purpose of terrain generators is to create realistic looking terrain, not retro graphics.

Which brings us back to the x-ray vision of art: “What you can use the program for is quite varied.”  That’s good because what I want to use the program for is not exactly what the program was designed to do.  Fracplanet, and Terraform (how I miss it!) were designed to do normal things like this:

Fracplanet 0.3.0 with terrain exported to POV-Ray and Blender. (from Tim Day’s site)

Neither Fracplanet or Terraform (RIP) advertise their wire frame features.  That’s because wire frame for most users is nothing more than a degraded version of an image presented for planning purposes.  Nobody intends to actually build landscapes out of wires –especially black and white, monochrome wires.  Like this:

This is art

Art?  In some ways, Fracplanet is better than Terraform because its default image shape is a sphere –a planet.  Sphere’s are circular and the circle is probably the most creative of all shapes by virtue of its great potential for doing all sorts of shape-y things.  Carl Jung, the high priest of 20th century abstract art, said it this way:

“The circle has had enduring psychological significance from the earliest expressions of human consciousness to the most sophisticated forms of 20th-century art.” Aniela Jaffe, ‘Symbolism in the Visual Arts’ Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

I guess he’s actually quoting Aniela Jaffe?  Here’s another “super-shape” quote:

“The circle is a symbol of the psyche (even Plato described the psyche as a sphere).” Aniela Jaffe, ‘Symbolism in the Visual Arts’ Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

I know it’s all psychology mumbo-jumbo, but it looks great when you mix it with art.  Circles have an extra dimension to them, visually speaking.  Who knows why?

Another question:  Why do fractal terrain developers never quote Carl Jung on their software sites?

Which brings us to this “x-ray” question about fractal art:  What is more important, the fractal or the art?

I mention this because although Fracplanet and Terragen (the Photoshop of terrain generators), use fractal algorithms in their creation of realistic looking landscapes, they aren’t really what I think most people would consider to be “fractal” programs and therefore “fractal art” programs either.

I was quite happy that Tim Day, the author of Fracplanet included “frac” in the title because that made it much more easy for me to pawn off whatever it could make under the label of “frac-tal” art.  Or is all landscape a type of fractal imagery and therefore fractal art of the most fractal-ish kind?

I don’t really care about the answers to questions like that.  Which leads me to ask the question:  Why don’t I care about the answers to questions like that?

It’s because what I’m really interested in is the imagery that fractal algorithms can produce and that includes the imagery that fractal algorithms can help in producing.  “Help” as in creating the initial imagery that can then be transformed and photo-shop-filtered into some sublime thing.  The frankenstein art of post-processing.

In that sense, the label, “fractal art” is as loosely applied to the output of a program like Ultra Fractal, a standard fractal art program, as it is applied to the output of Fracplanet –that is, if the goal is to produce art and not images for a science textbook.  To carry this thought a little further:  One ought to consider how “adulterated” and contaminated fractal art has always been since the very day fractal algorithms were given visible appearance.

There’s always been a touch of mystery in art when one thinks about it and especially when one attempts to explain it.  Call it “subjectivity” as in the phrase, “art is subjective”; but that is only the acknowledgement that art is oriented around the mind and not the tools that make it.  An art form defined by its toolset, its medium, is bound to be limited by “tools”.  That’s tools as in “you stupid tool”.

Great art is not the product of a great medium or of great tools.  Often it’s more of an accident or the result of someone like Roy Lichtenstein who saw something alluring and intriguing in making “paintings” of comic book images –the wire-frames of his times.

“What you can use the program for is quite varied.”  I think all developers are aware that what users will want to do with their programs will always extend beyond what it was they actually designed them to be used for.  And so, people have used Microsoft Excel to draw fractals instead of creating financial reports, and similarly “abused” the text-only capabilities of computer consoles to “draw” Ascii art instead of configuring their operating system.  Or Fracplanet to draw wire-worlds using the parameters in unnatural combinations:

This is more art made in Fracplanet 0.4.0

Fracplanet allows you to set the colors for several landscape features, mostly height-dependent like snow, mountains, hills, lowlands, shore, ocean –highest to lowest; but also rivers.  This allows one to create a two-color “monochrome” image.  It resembles a cheaply printed book illustration.

Yet more art made in Fracplanet 0.4.0

Altering the “Power Law” under the “Basics” tab allows for the generation of much more misshapen freaks of planetary nature such as this one.  That’s what power in the wrong hands will do!  The (so-called) “shore line” becomes the “frame of the ocean” and you can make it a transition color blending the land and sea together.  Note how the “planet” is now taking on the appearance of a microscopic dust particle.  Isn’t that ironic?  Or have I simply reduced a great program to nothing?

Is it better than the Mandelbulb?  That sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?  But really, such comparisons ultimately revolve around what it is that one wants to do with a program.  I’ve noticed that not everyone makes fractal art for the same reasons that I do.  Not everyone is pursuing the same interest.  There are a variety of interests in fractal art, that is, some of us are more interested in oddball imagery than rich, photo-realistic renderings.

How did such a disparate group of people (or am I the only eccentric one?)  end up being grouped together under the same label of “fractal art”?  In the words of the “developer-sage” Tim Day, author of Fracplanet…

“What you can use the program for is quite varied.”

Stop what you’re doing, forget everything you know –and just jump into fractals!

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

alienFlower by love1008

Synthetic.  That’s a good word in computer art.  You like synthetic things if you like computer art.  There’s too much color in this?  It looks unnatural?  It’s synthetic, just like those chewy fruit candies that don’t really taste like real fruit.  They taste better than real fruit.  Space age flavours.  This image has space age colors.  Love it, or the image will delete you.

Based on that watermark in the bottom right corner, I think love1008 would like you to visit his Deviant Art page.  If you’re color blind you won’t see anything.

Now, I know this is going to sound a little weird, but I find the next image to be fractal like even though it’s a four hundred year old painting of Mary Queen of Scots:

Mary_Queen_of_Scots_by_Nicholas_Hilliard_1578

Here’s a fractal made with Sterlingware, the fractalist’s fractal program:

Queen Mary by King Fractal

Don’t see a resemblance?  They’re both made up of curves, lacework, smooth textures, and all arranged in an almost –fractal-like way.  One just happens to have a women’s face in it.  All the rest is pure geometry.  I’ve seen better fractal examples of this sort of lacework, frilly, curving portrait like imagery, but this is the only one I could find easily.

MB3D_0443_hd by 0Encrypted0

Little things, like exponents, negative signs and zeroes have the ability to transform context and context transforms everything else.  Is this a particularly artsy, expressive kind of image?  I don’t think even the artist thought so or he’d have given it a more sublime title.  What I think makes this image so interesting is the thing in the upper left corner and middle that resembles a hillside at night with city lights on it.  Here’s a detail from the full size:

MB3D_0443_hd by 0Encrypted0 (detail)

Then the bright, glow worm, firefly image in the center and the dark, shadowed, silent area to the lower right give the image a strange depth and contrast between brilliant, energetic and moving and the other: subdued, silent and secret.  I was a little confused when I first saw this image because it seemed so vivid and alive and yet appeared to be, on the surface, made up of such ordinary things.

Data136pic10035s by Trafassel

Trafassel is always doing bold and unique things, but here what’s remarkable is the nice simple style of the image.  It’s haunted.  A city of cities built in the dark, or built for the dark.  Here’s the finest part of the full size image:

Data136pic10035s (detail) by Trafassel

As weird and intriguing as a pulp sci-fi cover.  That light edge shading and marble surface texture looks painted and not computer calculated.  A rare glimpse of style in the land of fractals.

The image comes from a posting on Fractalforums that appeared over the recent Christmas holiday season announcing a new type of 3D fractal, tentatively named the Mandelex.  This image above was Trafassel’s experimentation with that new formula.

mandelex 2 by Hiato

Although I think Hiato was probably working in black and white for simplicity’s sake, the stark color scheme is perfect for the type of intense patterning that this formula does.

mandelex 2 by Hiato

Click to view the larger versions so you can get a better view of the rich detail.  Hiato mentions the serpienski pattern at the corners which is another interesting feature.  Unfortunately the thread seems to have gone dead with nothing else posted to it for a month now.  But that may just mean Hiato and the others are tied up with other things for the time being.  I think this could be an interesting development for the future.  It was mentioned in the recent Chaos TV video from Fractalforum.com’s sponsor and owner Christian Kleinhuis.

Navalis_Ignis_Pauldebroti by Alef

Similar to the Mandelex, this one has raw, graphical creativity.  Although it’s just a variation (I think) of the Burning Ship formula, that one was pretty good all on its own too.  Note how the orange area goes from being sky and background in the upper left and then turns into a precisely cut wall or slice in the bottom.  Likewise there are similar “multi-dimensional” effects with the dark areas becoming space and then silhouette.  And then there’s the hazy sun image in the “sky” of the blue figure in the top right area.  It’s an object that defies objectiveness, just like the tricky optical illusions in Salvador Dali’s many surrealist paintings.  Raw fractals sometimes need nothing but a frame and that’s all Alef has done for this one.  That’s a mark of genius in the fractal art world.

FonkyBonkers by lxh

3D fractals could almost be considered a type of synthetic architecture.  Art Nouveau, an architectural style as well as a style of painting and decoration, would be just the category for this image.  This is one of a new type of image that features the curving, non-squarish style of imagery.  I think it’s going to be a whole step up for 3D fractals because the addition of such curving surfaces and designs makes for much more creative and interesting forms.

Speaking of Art Nouveau, here’s something that looks like one of Gaudi’s famous buildings.  All it lacks is a little more curvy-ness  to offset the sharp edges and regular lines, but it makes up for that with that extremely ornate and creative point.

PALACE by abbaszargar

Charles_Rennie_Mackintosh_-_The_Wassail_1900

This of course is a painting, watercolor maybe, in the Art Nouveau style of Charles Mackintosh who apparently was Scottish.  Rather unusual location for the Art Nouveau movement, but like many ideas in art it resonates with artists from all sorts of backgrounds.  I included this because it’s a great example, as is most Art Nouveau, of flowing, geometric imagery.  And so are most types of fractal imagery.

I think fractals are most powerful in impression when they exhibit this sort of symmetry and complex pattern and simple shapes.  That’s all this image really is; the hand painted faces, which fractals can’t produce, add something to the image but could easily have been substituted by simple shapes.

Rise by Tim Emit

What makes this image remarkable and worth turning our attention to?  I don’t know.  But there’s something compelling about that big lump of fractal thing.  It’s like a photo from a fractal biology textbook.  This is something exotic and found growing only in remote places.  Smaller versions have been grown in the laboratory, but they lack the robustness and size of ones like this that grow wild, on the side of a mountain, only lately discovered.

pot4b by RamiGraFx

What is it?  It’s a hand.  See the red box thing in its palm?  It’s a hand showing you this thing it picked up.  It’s been picking them all day and that’s why its fingertips are all covered with red stuff.

wallpaper_hyperbolic_garden by thargor6

I think this was made with Apophysis.  Not your average flame fractal image.  Once again, I present an image with strong geometric characteristics.  That is, except for the interesting woven sticks things in the center and other ball like structures.  I think that’s what caught my eye at first.  This image is a wide screen wallpaper and you really need to see it in its natural size to appreciate the detailed concentric circles.  It looks very Christmassy, but still has enough general appeal to be looked at all year round.  Perhaps it’s an aerial view of a forest and we’re looking down at the round outlines of the trees.  The biggest one in the center being set high up on a hill.  Apophysis can be used for good and not always for evil.

Life as we don’t know it by Kali

Kali’s been on a roll lately.  Coming up with all sorts of graphically intriguing stuff.  I think I mentioned his sea creatures and especially the scary, scary elephant worm in a previous posting.  Recently he’s come up with animated fog for one of the 3D mandelbulb programs that looks like it was made in the computer lab of a major movie studio.  And there’s the exploding mandelboxes, too.  I can’t show any of them here because they’re flash applets.  Step right this way folks, to see the floating brain and also the amazing liquid planet (scroll down to it).

This image incorporates, I suspect, some of the volumetric fog rendering techniques he’s been experimenting with.  Depicting depth is technical challenge in all computer rendering because the appearance of depth, if you think about it, is the result of many complex things, such as air, which have to be deliberately programmed into the imagery.  Perhaps it’s harder to generate the impression of depth than it is to program the fractals themselves.

The fog is used to create the appearance of distance as more distant objects are deeper into the fog than closer ones. It also produces a rather nice effect in general making the image look more painterly than the average mandelbox.  But it also has nice coloring and a fine use of lighting.  Lighting is something that is a parameter –adjustable element– in 3D fractals and it can be used for better or for worse.  This is an example of the better use of it, in fact, it’s an excellent example.  Not only that,  there’s a nice space at the top right for the title of the 2014 Fractalforums.com Calendar to go.  It’s a natural choice for the cover and exemplifies the latest rendering techniques as well as the exotic sights that fractals can produce.  Furthermore, this one has real commercial appeal to it being so well composed and finely rendered.

Rainbow Armada by isight

Heavy duty 3D programming here.  If you click on the image you’ll discover how easily it was to make: just a camera click.  I’ve always felt that there’s more to fractal art that pertains purely to the eyes and mind than there is that pertains to the programming and math.  From such a perspective, such a radical, precarious perch, comes the intuitive notion that other things are close to fractal art even though they are not anywhere near fractal math or programming.  Here we start from the premise that the medium of fractal art is pixels –imagery– and not parameters.

Is that crazy?  I think I hit my head.  That can happen when you just blindly jump into fractals.

Dave Makin, in a thread over at Fractalforums.com suggested that the mandelbulb deserves more attention:

From Fractalforums.com, click to go to the thread

Anyhow, while still shaking my head and wondering (like taurus66 in the quote) why anyone would be interested in that puffy, spiny thing called the mandelbulb,  along came someone else, in a completely different thread, posting their marathon session, 6-core rendering of “that puffy, spiny thing:”

From Fractalforums.com, click to go to thread

So I’m a sucker for anything that looks like it might be something new in the fractal world, and also a little bit curious to see what on Earth could be worth spending “10 days on 6 cores” to render…

Mandel Donut Vegas by Furan, click to view the 35mb version

The full-size is …big!  A screenshot says it better.  I had to shrink it somewhat to fit it into a blog posting:

Big is a relative thing, but this is biggy-big to me.

Print size is saying it’s nine feet wide… although at only 72 ppi…

But my browser doesn’t seem to do scaling very nicely so I looked it over at full resolution and I slowly realized that maybe that spiny, puffy mandelbulb really is worthy of more experimentation and general attention from fractal artists.

Even the title is hums with excitement: Mandel Donut Vegas.  Las Vegas, I’m sure he means, and the Mandel Donut bit is something that has a literary term for it where one contrasts two words with each other; the scientific Mandel and the truck stop Donut.  They get married in Vegas?

“Electrified Pumpkin” would not be as good.  I guess “Vegas” says electric better.  The top rings almost look like LED lights in a clear plastic tube.  And that’s the sort of schlocky, kitschy atmosphere of Vegas all over again.

At full size I was impressed by how much detail and variety there is in this “mere mandelbulb”.  It glows and the light fills, overfills and spills out in a hundred different ways.  This thing is more like a giant Disney World attraction than a simple 3D fractal image.  It must be the high resolution that makes such an impression possible.

Which brings me to another thing, that being the observation that while most fractal images look better as thumbnails (sad, but true) because they lack interesting detail when viewed large, a few, like Mandel Donut Vegas, can handle the close-up inspection and high resolution heavy lifting of a truly intriguing art object.  In fact, this thing looked better and better at high resolution.

Let me give an example:

Mandel Donut Vegas by Furan (detail)

Power, excitement; is it a roller coaster or blazing theatrical event?  Electric cables or ancient Egyptian mummy bandages?

A technical note.  You ought to be wondering what program this was made with.  Doctor Furan explains:

I’m rendering in my own Fortran 77 program (I’m working on implementation of material models to FE-systems. Now only in F77, so it’s a sort of an excercise.)

Mandel Donut Vegas by Furan (detail)

Allusions to the ruins of the Colosseum of ancient Rome?  I particularly like how the colors sometimes become too intense and overwhelm the image.  Lava flowing?  It’s all there –and more.  What are words compared to these sights?

Mandel Donut Vegas by Furan (detail)

Line and over-line.  Light and shadow; hot and cold; the burning and the burned.  Yes, that old puffball called the mandelbulb has a few thrills left in it.

Not to be confused with these things:

The original, original Mandelbulb

And now, back to lurking at Fractalforums.

Almost forgot: Furan has a website with more images: http://furan.sweb.cz/

I travel the internet, I make “Viewmarks” of artwork worth reviewing, and sometimes I end up with little scraps of things that I just can’t seem to fit into a proper blog posting.  But I keep them around anyhow because they’re food for thought, so to speak; singular ideas with potential.

Here are a few of these favorite things.

I found this great image, below, on Deviant Art.  Then, for some strange reason I browsed through the comments, which I rarely do, and stumbled on something –special.

~Click on images to view full-size on original sites~

mb3d_under_construction_by_viperv6

Check out the added lights and other details which are best seen in the hi-res version.  There’s some new formulas or variations out there that are interesting like this one.

And then this comment:

Comment from the above image on Deviant Art

Most comments however, follow this simple, straightforward, business-like style.

Comment from Deviant Art

And now for something completely different:

I forget where this one came from.  Sometimes that’s a good thing.

Now here’s something I quite like which I found, and probably would never have found unless it hadn’t been in Haltenny’s Deviant Art favorites collection:

U.F.I.-015-020512-020 by GhostWriterSociety

Nice colours, high contrast, simple but interesting colour combinations and a great use of symmetry, something which works so well in design although I can’t figure out why.  It has a golden, polished sense to it (if that makes any sense).  I thought perhaps it was a collage because of the wide variety of imagery, but the image notes didn’t give any hint as to how it was made, only this:

MNDB3D/ U.F.I.-015-020512-020 is a Fractal Art Image, created and owned by Peter Spangler, PRSJ22, GhostWriterSociety. It is protected under Copyright: MCN C4TIH-T2YA1-HKHS6

I hope that you enjoy these images.

P.Spangler

Founder of #Fractal-Group-UNLTD

You are invited to stop in, take a look around, and see if you would like to submit to one of our galleries. Our membership is open to all artists, upon request; send me a personal note as to your interest in becoming a member.

Interesting.  But not as interesting as this from the main gallery page:

ghostwritersociety notice

I hope the image gave you “PERSONAL ENJOYMENT”.  Because if it didn’t, you’re in big trouble.  But take heart, “YOU ARE VERY ‘WELCOME’!”  It’s ‘WELCOME’ in quotation marks.  Could that be different than the regular welcome which doesn’t have quotation marks around it?  (Is whatsoever really spelt with hyphens?)

Anyhow, lets not stand around here, I think I hear dogs barking.

Autumn’s Smile by Marty Strutt

They put warnings on cigarette packs here in Canada.  They take the form of horrific images of cancer patients and other scary things along with some sobering statement about the risks of smoking.  This image would go great on any pack of oil paints or beginner’s art kit to warn users of the long-term risks of painting.  In fact, it ought to scare digital artists too.  Sorry it’s out of season, but I suspect the type of audience this is aimed at is in a perpetual “autumn frame of mind”.

fractal pattern doodle from doodlerblog.com

What’s fractal about it?  That is the entry-point to a very profitable discussion.  Has the artist captured something of the nature of fractal art?  Or at least, fractal art as it commonly appears.  Is it “better” than fractal art?  I can see infinity –and more.  Thought snacks.  Crunch, crunch.

Hafnium crystal bar by Alkemist-hp on Wikipedia

This was featured on the front page of the English Wikipedia a few months ago and I immediately saw a resemblance to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.  I don’t think this is technically a fractal thing, although perhaps closer inspection of the crystal might reveal something of that nature.  There’s movement, there’s all sorts of things suggested, even some colors, which might be reflections of things outside the view of the photograph.  But none of those things are really there, which makes us feel insane.  If any art form can have ready-mades, fractal art is it.

Wavy.gif by someone at NASA

Thanks to Alef over at Fractalforums.com I found this scary octopus creature.  It’s just a demonstration of some wave formula, but look how weird and other worldly such humble things can be!  Worthy of any TV sci-fi episode.  Speaking of which…

Space 1999 screenshot (1976)

Dig the groovy op-art or math thing on the wall.  It may surprise some of you youngsters to know that there was a time when mechanical looking artwork was considered cutting edge and not primitive or retro as it is in today’s millions of colours, photorealistic Disneyland kind of world.  Somebody in set design thought this was likely to be the kind of thing people in the future would consider decorative.  Why not?  Nobody at the time thought it was any good.  It must have been ahead of its time.  There’s was more to the 70s than Planet of the Apes.  By the way (btw) click on the image to go to the YouTube channel which hosts the entire two seasons of Space 1999.  The year, 1999, used to be the unimaginable future.  Now it’s the unimaginable past.  But I still love the lunar scenery.

untitled by Dan-Florian Nitoi on Facebook

I like it.  A fine example of how a simple fractal shape can become something greater than a great fractal shape.  There’s no explanation or notes about it.  I’m not even sure the guy who posted it actually made it.  Perhaps it’s only a fractal in name.  A secret fractal.  Can you tell?

Digital Dharma Buddhabrot by Alef

Alef kind of apologizes for the rough look of this image, “My quasijulia mandelbrot buddhabrot brahmabrot. It lacks glamorous touch of photoshop, so watch it a bitt away from monitor, > 1m.”  But that’s one of the reason’s I happen to like it.  That, and the radioactive pink, red and blue color scheme.  And the wispy, shadowy, “memories” of fractals.

Land of Layers by dainbramage

Dainbramage (not his real name) says this: “Nothing special.  Came across this in a negative Amazing Box using _RotatedAbs as formula 2.”  I’ve been seeing it in my Viewmarks, thumbnail bookmark collection for quite a few months now and always stopped to look at the exquisite use of black and white, light and shadow, and of course, depth and levels.  This is Geometry made flesh.  Naturally, it’s even more impressive full-size.  And the shapes, both the shapes themselves and the empty spaces between them.  We should all suffer from this sort of braindamage.

Untiled Faces by Nathan Selikoff

You fiddle with the stick controllers for one display and it changes what you see in the others, with the right one being a zoom of what you select with the stick in the first display.  Notice the wierdo retro monochrome dislay, not unlike some of the mini monitor screens in Space 1999.  The artist explains it better, perhaps:

Untiled Faces is an interactive sculpture that mixes a chaotic dynamical system with its “meta” representation, allowing the viewer to explore the four-dimensional parameter space by moving a series of levers. The left pane of Untiled Faces shows a 32 by 32 grid of images. As the left lever is moved, a red square over one of the small images moves, updating two variables that affect the center and right panes. The right pane shows the selected image from the left pane at a larger size. The right lever moves a small red target within this image, updating another two variables that affect the center pane. The center pane shows a chaotic attractor, whose four coefficients are taken from the positions of the left and right levers. The center lever adjusts the virtual camera viewing this strange attractor. Thus, all three images are linked, and in a somewhat mysterious way show the relationship between a strange attractor and its Lyapunov exponent.

It won the “Most Innovative” award at the “Bridges” conference.  But that’s not too surprising when you see the other entries.  The math and science crowd seem to have a whole different perspective on “art”.

Pink Hibiscus by Amanda Moore

Very nice “colorama”.  The image tags for this on Fineartamerica.com include the word fractal and useful combinations of “canvas prints”; also, apophyis.  It could be processed but what does that really mean anymore in the world of advanced fractal features?  I had to fish this out of my browser cache because the site disables all the right-click functions on the mouse and the image was too tall for a screenshot on my laptop’s short screen.  No threatening copyright notices written with barbed wire, though.  But I suppose most of you artists reading this think all those things are good ideas.

I’m still hunting around Fineartamerica.com for fractal images; it’s always exciting to find a new online art venue.  So far it looks to be suffering from the same malaise as Deviant Art and all the rest.

Poelzig Hans (1869-1936), Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin (1919): Innenräume im Bau. Foto auf Papier, 18 x 24 cm (inkl. Scanränder). TU UB Plansammlung Inv. Nr. F 1600.

All that text was in the meta part of the jpg file, I guess.  Pretty convenient.  Note the groovy Greek capital beta letter and the double dot, umlaut things.  It’s going to be a dull world when everyone learns English.

This was how the Mandelboxes of the past were rendered.  There really is a fractal aspect to this one.  And that’s precisely what the architect was trying to depict, I’m guessing.  Things like this are planned out carefully ahead of time.

The fractal art world, on the other hand, is different:

Deviant Art is practically a mountain of art!

Somewhere on Facebook

If you build it they will come!

From the National Post newspaper

This isn’t a fractal, obviously, but then again it really isn’t not a fractal, either.  It suggests fractal to me.  It has all the attributes of a nice 3d fractal to it: depth and layers; nice surface texturing which repeats the forms from the large scale view; basic geometric shapes -circle, line, rectangle, symmetry, curves; a nice little bit of realism added in to enhance the context of the image.  Oh, I forgot; it’s ornamental, that makes it very fractal too.

chaoscope_24___orange_by_mario837

This on the other hand is definitely in the fractal/chaos theory realm of imagery.  Mario837 says this about it: “Made with Chaoscope 0.3.1 – Lorenz-74 attractor, Solid render.”  I like the shape and also the color.  Very few fractal artists experiment with color, in my opinion.  Color can transform things –for better or worse.  In this case it’s for the better.  Nice simple piece of algorithmic artwork, even if it does resemble a cross between a Cuisinart blade and a toilet seat.  Simple shapes can be not so simple sometimes.

ultraLucia 667 of 760 by Dan Wills

I don’t know if the link will take you directly to the full size image, but it’s worth a try.  Dan’s in a category all his own.  To really appreciate his work you have to stroll through it like one would a large exhibition.  Then I think you begin to see things the way he does.  Sometimes making great fractal art can be as simple as just wandering around in a formula and letting your eye set the course.

ultraLucia 634 of 760 by Dan Wills

There’s been a lot of talk (by me) about whether or not fractals can ever produce artwork that has as much substance and expressiveness as what is called (by some) to be Fine Art, Mona Lisa kind of stuff.  I’m of the opinion that it just doesn’t have the basic ingredients and structural requirements to do the job, but this image comes close.  It’s almost a Mona Lisa like thing, but the greenish shape is the mysterious, smile element of the art work.  Just as viewers stare at Mona’s smile to carefully read it’s subtleties, something’s there in this image, a mandelbrot man, probably, but the coloring is spread over an uneven surface which makes one have to look carefully to make out the faint outline of …what?

celestia_by_dorianoart

Am I dorianoart’s greatest fan now?  Maybe some of you think that all these are just variations on a theme, but then of course they are: variations on a great theme!  Nobody else makes images like this.  I don’t think they have the “vision” to do it.  It’s a subtle style and in the world of art subtlety is a powerful thing.

Sea Dragonfly by Lawrence Morrell

Although not exactly fractals, they do depict the fractal like patterns seen in butterfly wings.  Of course it’s the transformation these things have when rendered in frosted glass that really makes them interesting.  Glass is such a strange medium since it naturally distorts light and behaves with a mind of its own sometimes.  You can see more at the Portland Fine Art website or on Lawrence’s own website named lawrencemorrell.com.

Lawrence Morrell’s work at Portland Fine Art

2dbarcode from Wikipedia

This is meatiest of all food for thought bits.  Real art in its most energetic, catch it if you can, style.  Is this a piece of information, a diagram to explain how to read two dimensional barcodes?  Or is it the first step into the world of digital art?  The first step which requires your eyes –and the mind they’re plugged into– to be calibrated for the new medium.

Digital art can be read.  This is why mathematicians can get excited over rather dull images that are perfect graphical renderings of mathematical formulas and expressions.  That’s a bit of what I meant when I said the math and science crowd have a different perspective on “art”.  I’m sure Benoit Mandelbrot went bananas over the first computer printouts of fractal formulas; it was like seeing the face of things he’d only known as expressions of numbers and greek letters.

I like that “quiet zone”.  A digital DMZ?  Or is it just the digital equivalent of lawns and parkland?  A minefield for rogue pixels?  Do not go gentle into that good Quiet Zone!

I think the food’s all gone.  I’d better stop now.

ananke_by_dorianoart

DorianoArt has a real talent for mixing fractals with photography and doing it with style.  It’s not the typical marriage between earthy fractals and leafy scenery.  It’s more like an extraterrestrial romance between mother earth and alien invaders.

Despite such a disturbing courtship, the results are quite natural, or rather, quite unnatural, a hybrid landscape, a cyborg environment of majestic mountains and expansive pixel plains.

DorianoArt’s talent is playing match-maker to two fundamentally different image types and bringing about an unexpected harmony.  They complement each other, instead of curdling each other like orange juice and milk would.  Of course it’s not for everyone, especially for those who see no natural beauty in proliferating plastic scenery.

But for those who do, you can learn a thing or two from DorianoArt’s fractal panoramas.  They involve more than just slapping a clip-art sky over a fractal.  These sorts of images require a considerable amount of pre-marital counselling.

~Click on any of the images to view full-size on their original site~

north_pole_by_dorianoart

Was he just lucky with this one, or does Doriano know something about composition and design?  The mark of a real professional is that you don’t see the marks, it all looks natural and effortless.

In case you’re thinking that this is actual snow and ice, I invite you to click on the image and view it full-size.  Then you can feast your eyes and the wondrous moire effect, the hallmark of true digital artistry.  The sky is real (you knew that, didn’t you?) and yet it blends seamlessly into the ice fields at the horizon.  And the sunlight too.

lantis_by_dorianoart

Is this the same mountain and hill from the first?  The sky is the same too.  But one barely notices this because the rolling expanse of striped cylinders draws our attention away and on down to that hazy vista of gently rolling geometry.

There is absolutely nothing natural about these striped cylinders (with purple ends).  In fact, they’re almost abstract.  Who would ever have thought of combining two things like this?  Not even Dr. Frankenstein.

radianta_by_dorianoart

There is nothing short of pure chemical joy to be found in both the chromafied sky and the pixel-gritty foreground of mercury drops.  The glass –-something— in the right midground is just a pleasant extra which, now that I notice it, leads our eye off to the vanishing point of this computerized carpet.  The moon, or is that the Earth? is conveniently located right where it is.  Who is this master of the fantastic?

You know, these images do remind me a little of the cover images for video games.  Slick, amazing alien landscapes and impossible combinations of technology and nature.  I also remember that the cover art was sometimes more impressive than the games.

It’s refreshing to see an artist who actually displays their real name on the internet.  Reminds me of the old days when people had real names and you knew who was crazy because they were the ones walking down the street waving their hands and shouting like they were on the phone.  Back to the art…

magic_wood_by_dorianoart

Oh no.  He’s gone too far with this one.  Mandelbulb, okay; and blue sky shining through the mandelbranches like in a forest, that’s okay too, but the troll kids?  Troll kids are too much.  Let’s let Doriano (I know his real name, now) explain:

Several things here starting from a wood photo in the background…(just an hour ago I was in a wonderful wood five minuts from my house) -then Mandelbulb 3D – and finally in the foreground the little people are (Gosha character) rendered with Poser 7. Final adjustments of lights in Photoimpact/Photoshop

It’s all fun and games until the Posers show up.  Creepy.

ellipsya_by_dorianoart

Doesn’t that bronze, or orange-chrome tubular thing just fit in perfectly with a south-western U.S. desert landscape?  Although, I think those objects on the horizon on the right, which are conveniently located at the vanishing point of the metal drops, are skycrapers and not buttes or rock pinacles.  A nice use of pattern, irregular objects, photo-sky and natural city scape.

You see?  I told you it wasn’t as simple as just slapping two things together.  Doriano is an artist not just a computer graphics wizard.  Son of da Vinci!

mandelbulb_sculpture_by_dorianoart

I present to you, loyal Orbit Trap readers, the Mona Lisa of our time.  Compare it with the real thing, if you’re not familiar with it.  Here we have a head-like thing in the foreground with nothing else but a dim, undetailed landscape for a background.  Of course, I don’t think Doriano intended such a allusion.  But then, did Leonardo intend his audience to fixate upon his subject’s smile?

Artist’s create but the audience interprets.  At any rate, I find it to be a richly colored and rendered mandelbulb image.  I can’t quite figure out what makes it so interesting, but as I said earlier, good art is a bit of a riddle.

The notes say “Here are two Mandelbulbs + a Terragen background for this “neoclassic” mandelbulb sculpture…..”

robotika___2__by_dorianoart

“One of the images of mine I more love returns here in another version…Hope You can appreciate it!  (mandelbulb 3D -terragen)”

Hmmn…  So the sky and mountains aren’t photographs at all,  they’re made in terragen, the artificial landscape generating program.  That’s an interesting combination, although the terragen landscapes are so realistic they might as well be photographs.

The “mandelbeetles” are an interesting element adding synthetic animal life as well as synthetic ground to the lifelike horizon and sky.  Perhaps this is their hive and they are hatching out or tending the next generation.  Of course, the truth is probably that they’re both part of the same mandelbulb image and it’s the formula that connects them.

borderline_by_dorianoart

This one is pure syntheticism.  The land is artificial and the sky, whatever it is, is not even the color, much less anything else sky-like except that it is above.  Once again, the colors are rich and multi-faceted which is a talent of computer graphics.  Moire and pixel-grit add another scale of artistry here so you’ll want to click on the image and view it full-size, that is, if you like this sort of computer abstract expressionism like I do.

future__energy_by_dorianoart

I don’t know if Doriano made the city imagery in the top, but he complemented it well with the orange energy collecting cells at the bottom.  The lighting is quite well done as if both these image areas were created together.  That’s the sort of harmony I was talking about at the beginning.

sindragosa_ii_by_dorianoart

I couldn’t find the first Sindragosa, or the first Robotika one either.  I don’t like the search function on Deviant Art.  Nothing works as well as Google.

This one makes me think of an illustration for a book, perhaps one of Sindbad’s adventures, lost in the desert and arriving suddenly at a mysterious place, which of course shines like gold.  What great looming thing is causing that shadow we’re in?

I’m sure many people will find Doriano’s mandelbulb/box renderings a little rough, but I find that stylish.  It adds a unique texture to the images and uniqueness is something that one doesn’t see much of in the fractal world; it’s just too easy for all of us to follow the same path without realizing that there’s a lot more creative potential in how you render something than what you actually render.  And you won’t get to be the leader of the pack by stepping off the trail.

Doriano’s not a formula trail-blazer or technical pioneer (as far as I know), but he’s done great things by being creative with the artwork rather than the tools, and in the end it’s that fresh approach that makes his work stand out.

Back, several postings ago, when I reviewed the latest Fractalforums.com calendar, I heaped abuse on Pauldelbrot’s image from his Mandelbrot Safari series calling it retro and not cutting-edge.  The owner of Fractalforums.com and publisher of the calendar, Christian Kleinhuis, informed me that what Pauldelbrot was doing was in fact very cutting-edge as it was utilizing new methods that enabled him to zoom to a much greater extent than had previously been possible.  And something about a new coloring method too.

From Atomic Pulp

But as an illustration of how weird fractal art as an art form can be, Pauldelbrot’s work can be kicked and abused in one review and then praised in another, just a month later as you will soon see.

Let me explain this apparently senseless thinking:  For the calendar, I didn’t think Pauldelbrot’s work had commercial appeal (as well as just about everyone else’s work in the calendar); But in this posting I present his Mandelbrot Safari images as epitomizing the pastime of fractal exploration (and a fresh example of that) as well as a good example of classic-style fractal art.

But most importantly, I rather like many of these images myself for their own sake, and the fact that they’re from the Outer Limits just enhances that.  One shouldn’t talk too much about fractal art.  Perhaps most readers have already skipped to the pictures.

The best way to follow the Mandelbrot Safari is by reading its own forum thread on Fractalforums.com.  More images, comments, etc…  Who knows?  You might even decide to buy one of the FFs 2012 calendars for no other reason than because it contains one of these Safari images.  Now wouldn’t that make me look stupid after saying they had no commercial appeal?  Buy a calendar —fight the man!

~Click on images to go to original forum thread with larger images in it~

The initial image from Pauldelbrot’s Mandelbrot Safari thread

The safari begins:  fairly common terrain we’re starting off from on May 4th, 2012.  Doesn’t look particularly promising, I must say.  But I’m not the pilot or the navigator on this expedition.  Let’s wait and see what’s over the horizon.  I’m sure he’s got some exotic destination in mind.

evdz1_008_lrg by Pauldelbrot

The game is afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say.  That’s an odd looking color to be seeing out in this sargasso sea of yellow.  The perennial question:  Where does it go?

evdz1_017 by Pauldelbrot

I jumped ahead a few of Pauldelbrot’s image postings and here we are at the first of many “portals” to the (glittering) unknown.  If you’re anything of a fractalnaut, you ought to be getting excited right now because it looks like this trip is 1. never going to end, and 2. going to be full of surprises.

evdz1_018_lrg by Pauldelbrot

A comment:

Is that the coloring of Pauldelbrot’s image, or of this guy’s hefty signature?  (sorry, couldn’t resist; it’s the duty of everyone on the internet to stamp out signature lines and other forms of “junk mail” content)

evdz1_029_lrg by Pauldelbrot

According to the thread, we’re now zoomed into about 4 e30 magnification.  That’s 4 and thirty zeroes behind it.

evdz1_044 by Pauldelbrot

Pauldelbrot answers a tech question in the thread here about what program he’s using:

…a mix of custom and off-the-shelf code here. Time on these has increased but the latest few have taken a few hours each. The iterations are still pretty low (around 5000) but the precision bits are getting fairly numerous.

A couple hours, each?  We’re obviously on the other side of some computing sound barrier.

evdz1_090 by Pauldelbrot

Note by author:

Now over 20,000 iterations in the shallowest parts of each image, and the magnification has just passed one googol, too…

Sound sci-fi -ish, doesn’t it?  What’s a googol?  Biggy big!  So big it’s covered with big-fur!  That’s the layman’s definition. (it’s this, actually: 10¹⁰⁰)

Gets slower and slower with depth…

He’s doing this in Ultrafractal (UF) and makes this comment which sheds some light on the type of technical challenge all this is:

I should warn you that to get close to the quality results I’ve posted you’d need to use 3×3 AA, depth 2, nonadaptive AA because depth 1 isn’t enough oversampling and UF’s adaptive AA seems not to work as well as mine. The deeper images would thus need some very beefy hardware to render in anywhere near a reasonable time; or even a cluster rendering different tiles of the image per machine.

This is what Christian Kleinhuis, the owner (and sponsor) of Fractalforums.com must have meant when he told me Pauldelbrot’s image in the calendar was actually cutting edge imagery after all.

evdz1_113 by Pauldelbrot

The images are largely like this; circular and elegant, which is the sort of thing that characterizes classic fractal art –highly detailed, organized images.  I guess “complex geometric” is not a bad description, either.

Pauldelbrot says this in response to a comment about the great coloring:

It “discovers” colors, because it keeps shifting and blending them. Colors that are somewhat between pure primaries and secondaries, or somewhat desaturated as well as saturated, included, which may often be overlooked by humans doing things manually.

evdz1_204 by Pauldelbrot

“Overlooked by humans doing things manually”  Computers are more than just powerful paintbrushes.  It’s through this sort of exploration that one can develop a real appreciation for the machinery that they’re using.  That’s half the fun, I’d say.

I’ve just shown a sampling of images here; you’ll definitely want to check out the thread if you find these interesting.

evdz1_218 by Pauldelbrot

Some of the really dark images are the best in my opinion.  This one is from November 30th, 2012 and marks the 7th month of the safari.  It’s still going on, although, as Pauldelbrot said, the rendering gets slower because of the depth of the zoom.  Another image was posted just this week (Dec 11).

Pauldelbrot has embarked on a number of these zoom excursions with the same journey into the unknown feel to them.  Here’s some highlights from some of the others…

511_28_11_12_2_35_18 by Pauldelbrot

A note from this image, from a series entitled “Fall Woods 1”:

This zoom is near the Autumn Forest zoom. However, the area zoomed into is around a seahorse below and to the right of the green period-3 blob in Autumn Forest I. Out here, the “zero basin” doesn’t exist — there is no zero attractor at all. Where that happens, the basin implodes into a disconnected Julia set, which the surrounding seahorse shapes still try to conform to, with amazingly convoluted results!

Images in this series have mostly been rendered at 32000×24000 and downsampled for a whopping 625 samples per pixel, needed to render the “zero basin Julia” regions properly. I was able, nonetheless, to render most of them in under two hours.

Yeah, that’s 32 –thousand by 24-thousand.  Pauldelbrot is no wimp when it comes to making fractals!

511_03_11_12_12_37_51 by Pauldelbrot

511_02_11_12_12_20_32 by Pauldelbrot

Those above are two of my personal favorites from the Autumn Forest II and I series.  The disorienting vastness of fractal panoramas is easily seen in both as well as Pauldelbrot’s excellent coloring style.  In the process of trying to make fractals into art, I wonder how many of us forget how artistic fractals can be in their raw, freshly calculated form –if only we were to explore them and not the latest layering techniques more.

Lilac Exponent by Pauldelbrot, Sept 14, 2011

This is from more than a year ago.  It caught my eye back then because of the intense patterns of shapes and shapes and more shapes.  This sort of thing is an art form that only fractal algorithms can do and they do it very well, especially at the hands of someone as talented and creative as Pauldelbrot.

As Christian Kleinhuis was saying; Pauldelbrot has really done something new and different even if it does lie within the old category of “classic” fractal art.  I think Pauldelbrot has elevated that classical category higher with this kind of work and his probably represents the best of its kind.

Best of its kind so far, that is.  If Pauldelbrot’s herculean efforts and endless hours of rendering have shown one thing, it’s that there’s still much to be explored even in the realm of classical fractal imagery.  I hope he’s inspired a few others to follow this path, even if it takes them away from the seemingly much more advanced 3D fractals that most work on these days.

There’s a theme that binds all these images together but I can’t seem to find the right words for it.  Freaky; harmonic; other worldly; sacred symbols; journey into mystery: they all fit for some but not for all.  I guess variety is best; with a play on the famous book by Henry James, The Variety of Religious Experience.  There’s a cult-like, mystical weirdness to these –an attractive kind of quicksand.  Perhaps it can’t be described.  Perhaps it shouldn’t — it mustn’t!

~Click on images to view full-size on their original site~

Some old thing by Brutaltoad

Description: I had this old picture lyin’ around an I thougt it would make a great present for the mandelbulb’s birthday <3

happy birthday, Mandelbulb!

That’s from the gallery page on Fractalforums.com.  It never ceases to amaze me how often the folks at Fractalforums.com (FFs) stumble across great looking artwork and then casually move on to some deep technical discussion.    I call this one, Return of the Overlords.  Ancient astronauts; landing pads in the Andes; road to the moon.

This was posted in Nov. 2011 and even then was considered retro by its author.  I think it’s one of the best of the early mandelbulb images.  The mandelbulb wasn’t anywhere as interesting, visually, as the things it gave birth to.  But BrutalToad has managed to nudge it into a higher orbit, primarily, it seems, through color and background texture in addition to the nice scene selection as well.  The shadow is a nice touch.

Sacred Maths by Tabasco Raremaster

This one inspired the theme for the whole posting.  Posted just a few weeks ago on FFs it suggests a mathematical, geometrical religious icon.  You’ll note that the five “snowflakes” are each different and yet a variation of the same theme.

Normally fractals produce similar things since that’s one of the main, expected characteristics of fractals.  Of course, things have gotten much more sophisticated lately and this is a good example.  The different shapes suggests human and not algorithmic creation which again gives it a strange feel for a fractal.

Back in classical times geometry and other mathematical subjects were seen by some as semi-religious topics and became part of the culture of a number of religious cults and societies.  It seems ironic to our modern minds that science would inspire thoughts of the supernatural but the topic does pop up from time to time in online discussions about fractals and so the theme, and the title of this image, needs little explanation.

Chinese Royal Doll by Milan Dobrojevic

The alien-ness of fractal art can be clearly seen in this image.  I’m guessing that it was either made in Steven Ferguson’s Sterlingware or Fractal Explorer using one of his formulas.  I’ve never been able to understand why programs like Sterlingware (Sterling; Sterling-Ware…) are used so little by fractal artists since they produce such creative imagery and do it so easily too.  It’s another one of those fractal art things that requires deeper explanation and contemplation, I guess.

From the phone number on his website, 011art.com, Milan is located in Serbia, part of the former Yugoslavia.  He seems to be very active in a number of fractal related activities and businesses.

It’s a joke now to say that one could stare at an image all day, but for this one by Milan it’s almost true.  Of course, if you have the program you can zoom into it and explore it in great detail which is what people do in art galleries when they move in and look closely at artwork.  One of the things that makes fractals so unusual is this visual playground aspect to them.  It’s almost as if they’re a landscape and the images we see of them are mere snapshots.

Cover Photo 1 by Fractal Art Gallery

I found this one on Facebook, a rather new source of fractal art for me.  This is a brilliant example of how accidentally wonderful 2D fractals can be.  Eyes, hair, fingers; and all that simply from the isolated context all three of these elements find themselves in, in this one selection.

I couldn’t figure out who actually made this image and I had to make up a title for it as well.  Despite the endless self-promotion on Facebook and the flood of junk one has to wade through to find something interesting, I found this and the author is anonymous.

The Paper Caper by Pauldelbrot

According to the gallery page, this is a 2D Mandelbox.  The intriguing details are not so easily seen in this low-res version but it’s good enough to display the contrasting patterns that make this image so… mysterious.

It’s like a big fractal web press printing out little fractals.  Pauldelbrot specializes in these “retro” type images but he gets interesting results because he explores advanced variations of them.  The old style, flat fractals were never a dead end, creatively, they simply require artists with a good grasp of their 2D potential.

Anyhow, Pauldelbrot has flattened the mandelbox.  It’s forwards and backwards at the same time.  Just goes to show there’s always something new and exciting in fractal art if you can think creatively.

The Wall at Sunrise by Tim Emit

Do you think this thing is fascinating?  If you don’t then we clearly don’t share the same tastes in fractal art.  I was stunned when I first saw this on FFs.

To me it’s a stage, and in some strange way that defies logic, there are two lights shining on it.  The patterns and wide variety of them make this one that’s well worth taking a closer look at.

But even in large view the image is great.  Maybe that’s what a great fractal image is: good art at every scale.  The name, “Tim Emit” rings a bell.  Could he be the famous “timemit”?  You can see now why the fractal world needs a phonebook.

It’s a stage that needs no performers because the show is the concert hall itself.  The audience; the orchestra; the curtains; even the backdrop are part of the show.  Should I mention that it didn’t get a single comment on FFs and I was the only one to rate it?  Another mark of greatness in the fractal world.

crystalRock by Tom Lowe

I think I was doing the right thing when I gave Tom Lowe the very first Nobel Prize for Fractal Art; now he’s gone on to create 3D cellular automata.  If you click on the image up there you’ll go to the page that talks about it on his own website for Automata Finder.

Cellular automata are extremely weird as well as being a natural phenomenon.  Seeing one in 3D, or what appears to be 3D is disorienting in a wonderstruck way.

Advantages of this algorithm over standard cellular automata:

• The automata is embedded in a continuous space and continuous time
• It can be simulated at any level of detail, allowing it to be simulated in the distance or up close
• Results are often ‘dynamic fractals’ with the small features changing more quickly than the large features, this matches nature quite frequently

(That’s from Tom’s Automata Finder webpage.)

“Embedded in a continuous space and continuous time”  “Dynamic fractals” — this is the sort of creeping number monster that cellular automata (CA) are, but Tom has jumped the gap and created a the equivalent of a walking Frankenstein.  Although I’m not actually sure about that because I didn’t understand most of what he’s saying on the page.  But that’s what I saw in the video.

subsurface_matrix_decay_by_mandelwerk

Not the sort of thing I’ve ever seen Mandelwerk (Johan Andersson on Deviant Art) make, but this is really a fantastic image for it’s imagery and also the inclusion of wireframe elements.  This is quite ironic when you read the notes from the gallery page:

Just wanted to show you what it looks like when I arrive for a days work at MB3D.

The arrival to a new 3D hybrid fractal world (on a lucky day)

Normally I never submit these kind of first arrival overview renders, but I always do one big to be able to see where the interesting shapes are (if there are any) before I zoom in and get the disposition right. ;)

Clic on the image and check out the full view image, and you might understand how it feels…

A mandelbox in jeans and a t-shirt.  There was a time when jeans and t-shirts weren’t fashionable.  Maybe this will be the next big thing in mandelbox fashions?

Portable Stage Play by FractalJam

Crumbleton Rooftop Terrace by FractalJam

I’ve reviewed an image similar to this by FractalJam in a recent post.  The upper one is the weirdest; they both look like some sort of elegant coffee table but the upper one has what looks to be a snowy forest diorama inside of it.  The lower one is more tropical and suggests a palm tree in the center of the top surface.

They’re very unique mandelboxes as well as very bizarre furniture things.  The coloring in the top one is exceptional.  One doesn’t often find such a combination of intense detail beside areas of no detail.  They complement each other.  I think it’s also a rule of design or something.

Beyond the Familiar, Into the Unknown by dainbramage

The compositioning here emphasizes the central ball node and the koch-like pattern on it.  I think that’s how it works.  The lighting just magnifies that effect.  This type of image is usually dull and monotonous but this one speaks and beams “enlightenment”.  The mark of mystery, the sound of silence; cave of the cosmic tree!  And the tree is covered with trees… the cave itself is a big tree… Where are the leaves?  Our thoughts about the tree are it’s leaves.  How long does summer last around here?

Autumn Leaves by Trafassel

Herr Trafassel, the author of Gestaltlupe and his famous Journey to the Center of the Mandelbox is back again with this very victorian and ornate looking leafy spiral.  Is is a coincidence that it happens to be called “Autumn Leaves” and just happens to follow the previous image of the leafless trees?

On a more serious note, this is actually an image made with the original mandelbulb formula.  It doesn’t normally produce such rich imagery except in Trafassel’s own program, Gestaltlupe.  Or does he have magic powers?

Buddhabrot_moshiahobrot_talis by Alef

This is from a FFs thread discussing Problems with implementing Budhabrot in UF.  There’s a whole bunch of interesting little “rough” images in it.  The Buddhabrot is a very captivating fractal as it often displays this kind of hazy but ordered kind of imagery.  The ghostly appearance and similarity to images of the Buddha have made this fractal an image class of its own.  The golden glow, the obedient sparks; something dharmic this way comes!

Fractal collection by National Post

See any familiar formulas here?  There’s a few that resemble julia sets.  Must be made with UF I’d guess since I don’t know of any other program that gets you that shiny, metallic look so well except for XenoDream or Incendia.  What’s the connection here with the other images in the post?  I’m sure you can see it.  You might need to view the high-res version to be sure.

The Curvaceous Columns of Coldinica by Madman

This one is fresh from the oven, Dec 3rd.  There’s an interesting note on the FFs gallery page:

Description:  Just playing around with MJB’s DE Combinate Technique. Thanks Mark!

That’s MarkJayBee I believe.  Isn’t this the sort of Antarctic city buildings imagined in HP Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness?

At any rate, the shapes and combination concrete/glass/grid construction here is something I’ve never seen even in a 3D fractal.  Clearly, we haven’t reached the end of the varieties of fractal experience.

urbandecay_by_markjaybee

“DEcombinate in Inv Max mode using: Menger3/Transform2IFS/ColumnsIFS/Trans-qIFS/TilingIFS” –from the image notes on the DA page.

If you view the high-res (1,600px × 800px!) you’ll see the variety of forms from that list up there.  But just looking at the low-res you can easily see that this is something that produces categorically different shapes and imagery.  Quite an exciting development; this one is only from Nov. 16.

Desert Fortress by Kali

This is such a beautiful image and yet it may appear to some to just a new rendering of a common fractal pattern.  It’s made with Fragmentarium, a program made by Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen and maybe that’s what gives it its special, spectacular look.

Of course, it could have something to do with Kali, too, who is well known for his deeply weird —living— fractal creatures (and a scary worm, too).  Kali is one of those people who is constantly creating interesting artwork as well as extending the capabilities of the medium itself.

I have often found that its not the developers themselves who get the best results from their programs but rather some user who just seems to have an intuitive feel for what the program does best.  It’s probably the same way with musical instruments and power tools, too.

The desert image is a careful balance between the extremes of  mechanical perfection (i.e. monontony) and slick surface rendering (i.e. obliteration of the subject matter).  These two things meet at the place where they compliment each other and the simple fractal pattern is transformed into an extensive landscape of fractal sand sculptures; each slightly unique and yet connecting with the others in similarities of shape.

MB3D_0174_hd by 0Encrypted0

These are not your Dad’s fractals.  Yet another example of how the fractal art tools are evolving.  I had to look carefully to find something in this image which would connect it in any way to the rest of the 3D fractals I’ve seen.  From the comment on the FFs gallery page, “slon_ru” seemed to share the same sense of wonder:

Nice!
Is it mandelbulb3d?!

The sophisticated colouring further disorients me because the “alien swizzle-sticks” appear to be individually coloured although a few seem to betray the standard method.  It received a 5-star rating by five members which is quite something these days on FFs.  Unlike DA, where the comments and feedback grow “like lard on a pig”, the FFs crowd seem to be more absorbed with solving the latest math and graphical rendering riddles than concerning themselves with “who’s watching me?”

pain observer by Jesse

Fractal Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; or Aladin’s cave?  Did I just say that the authors of fractal programs don’t usually make the best stuff with them?  I’m guessing that Jesse used his own program here and what a stylish, non-block-like scene he’s found.  The red and blue, Cecil B. de Mille, Carlsbad Caverns, amusement park lighting is caused by the little lightbulb sources that one can orient and adjust in the program.  Most use them to just add light, but Jesse has used them to paint the walls with glowing color.

Well, there you have it.  Expect bizarre new sights in the 3D fractal world in the coming year;  I’m seeing the addition of a few more gears to the fractal engine.  And maybe a few folks will rediscover the potential of those flat fractals.  Does that sound like crazy New Year’s tabloid predictions?

Welcome back, readers, once again to the home edition of the Fractalbook Network’s much idolized game show: Name! That! Comment!

Tonight, due to the panic of sweeps week and the fear of ratings slippage, we’ve cobbled together a most prodigious presentation.

Our crackhead team of scientologists has scoured cyberspace (and beyond!) to seek out only the purest and surest OT buffs — only the truly obsessed OT devotees — only the utterly braindead OT rooters.

And, for one night only, we’ve gathered all these obstructionistic opposers together on the same staged page for your enjoyment at their expense. Please welcome OT’s fave haters in Name! That! Comment!: OT "Biggest Fans" Edition!

Remember how we play? A questionably artistic, allegedly fractal-type image is first displayed and subjected to your critical scrutiny. Then, you are provided with four comments. Three are imposters. To score, you must correctly select the one comment that was actually posted to the purported art object.

Round One features work and chat from this anti-OT foul nest on deviantART. Here, the hating is raw, the minds are numb, and the facts are beside the point. Ad hominem is not kept to a minimum. Each correct answer is worth 200 points.

[Click on images to view at higher resolution on source sites.]

Coral Rift by lyc

1.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ Remember, kids, if yr art looks like this then please delete it ASAP.
(b)_____ Remember, kids, if yr poop looks like this go to the docter ASAP.
(c)_____ Remember, kids, you’ll catch more flies with honey than with yr own poop.
(d)_____ Remember, kids, yr should always find excretion metaphors befitting for this artist.

Endless dreams of deep by IDeviant

2.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ Reminds me of microphotography of gastrointestinal bile.
(b)_____ Reminds me of metastasized photosynthesis in poison oak.
(c)_____ Reminds me of the inside of the cathedral in Albi.
(d)_____ Will construction on the new cloverleaf interchange ever be finished?

The Wall by esintu

3.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ Looks to me like a weird broken view of high-rise offices. I swear I can see people in some of the windows.
(b)_____ Looks to me like a refracted eclipse of a parking garage. I swear I can see oil stains on the cement floors.
(c)_____ Looks to me like a flashback glimpse of Aztec ruins. I swear I can see the bloody human hearts still beating.
(d)_____ I find these new traffic cones to be somewhat distracting.

Red Winds by platinus

4.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ The drift of a fish hook floating languidly in liquid mercury. One of my outré first impressions!
(b)_____ The sensuality of an innocent "J" resisting halfheartedly its bed restraints. One of my freaky first impressions!
(c)_____ The flourish of an ear listening closely to beloved skin. One of my off-the-wall first impressions!
(d)_____ Mommy, why does the man with all the face tattoos have his mustache pierced through his earlobe?

Smile by milleniumsentry

5.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ I still think that smiley faces in a fractal is a "masterpiece," especially if a person has a sense of humor.
(b)_____ I will assert that smiley faces in a fractal is an "abomination to artists everywhere," especially if a person has a scrap of culture and taste.
(c)_____ If there ever was an archetype for a negative example of a fractal art masterpiece, this would decidedly be it.
(d)_____ [OT reader now viewing image above and then suddenly forced into the POV of the young cocooned boy in the film Aliens]: "Kill me. Please. Kill me."

Okay, players. Please mark your ballots and don’t touch that dial. We’ll be right back after this important message.

Public Service Announcement
*************************
Hello again, kids. I’m David X. Machina, former Compliment-O pitchman and empty suit who plays a blogger on this blog. I’d like to speak with you today about a creeping and pervasive public mental health contagion. Fractalbook Derangement Syndrome (FDS).

Although your host, Mr. Animal, relies upon "low" comic devices like satire and sarcasm to lampoon the foibles of online art community confabbing, the long term effects of Fractalbook exposure can indeed lead to real life maladies like delusions of grandeur and in-a-bubble cognitive dissonance. In advanced stages, the worst manifestation of FDS can lead to the psychotic belief that one is actually an artist who is actually making art.

And what is the root of this perfidious illness? It’s caused by the lack of something rarely ever found on Fractalbook: honest and critical feedback.

In fact, Fractalbook actively discourages reliable art criticism. This construct is self-evident if one references what many consider to be the equivalent of a Fractalbook Bible: The "Play Nice Policy". This Big Brotherish document is housed on Redbubble, an online enclave that describes itself "as a respectful, supportive and encouraging community of people who are passionate about art and creativity." Here’s a snip of their policy:

We ask that you are mature, respectful and considerate in your interactions with others. If you disagree with something you see on Redbubble, please be mindful that it’s not ok to target other artists, write personal or hurtful comments about them or use them as negative examples. Such actions are considered a breach of our community guidelines on acceptable behavior and can result in account closure.

Since when did having an honest reaction to a work of art become immature? No doubt, a response like this is much more indicative of adulthood:

I think WOW someone should give you a misspelled award for this superb cutting edge mind-blowingly amazing superb fave of faves!!!!!! Have a great weekend!!!!!!

And isn’t any response other than a sycophantic compliment potentially "hurtful"? And can’t artists learn something about both their art and their craft from so-called "negative examples"?

Let’s take a hypothetical situation. You’ve enrolled in a creative writing workshop. Every time your poem or story or play comes up to be critiqued by your peers, each workshop member gives you a variation of this response:

Another Masterpiece!!!!!! I could read it allll day!!!!!!

What do you think is your potential to grow as an artist in such an environment? And would you begin to suspect that your peers were being less than dependable in their assessment of your work? Might you start to speculate that their responses were complete bullshit and designed only to have you reciprocate to their work with similar saccharine backslaps?

If you think the compliments you receive daily on sites like Redbubble and devianART are on the level and come with no ulterior motives, I suggest you never leave your Fractalbook bubble, and I would not recommend you send your "art" out to a juried gallery, exhibition, or art magazine. You could be in for a severe reality check.

Working professionals in the fine arts face the possibility of rejection as a constant fact of life. Over time, such professionals are forced to develop thick skins. They also undergo frequent critical reappraisals of their own work.

Can you be circumspect about your art if everything you produce is exuberantly praised? No. Your artistic growth will be stifled if you never leave your sealed Fractalbook biodome. In fact, you’ll stagnate — surrounded by daily doses of mediocrity and the illusion that what you create is widely and unremittingly beloved.

But, truth be known, you don’t want a cure for FDS, do you? You like being told everyday that "you are really great." Besides, being cured of FDS would require an epiphany that your online art community really has absolutely nothing to do with art. It’s just another online social club modeled after a high school clique. You might indeed be the most popular kid in the cafeteria, the chosen one with the most faves and hugs and smileys exuding floating hearts and popping kisses, but it’s questionable that you’re ever going to be a working professional artist.

So, I wonder, why do you bother coming to this blog in the first place? Is it, in spite of what you perceive as its many faults and cheeky tone, an oasis — a kind of refuge — the one place in the fractal art community where you are treated like an adult and will not be pro forma falsely flattered coupled with the unavoidable expectation that you must repay the favor in kind?

Thanks for listening. Oh, and have a nice weekend!!!!!!

*************************
Public Service Announcement

Welcome back to the show that never dies but wants to: Name! That! Comment! Round Two features work and chat selected by random lottery to represent the "biggest fans" of OT. Here the hating is pretentious, the minds are scrambled, and the facts are wholly unconsidered. Fallacies frolic like animated gifs of sickeningly cutesy unicorns. Each correct answer is worth 400 points.

Bug Monster Wearing Robe by HalTenny

6.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ Whoa! I’m taking a potent antacid!
(b)_____ Damn! I’m having a salvia flashback!
(c)_____ Yo! I’m awaiting some artistic prowess!
(d)_____ Those Shaolin monks are sure getting more worldly.

121010-B by pasternek

7.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ This is your brain on bad art.
(b)_____ [Serious doctor voice]: "I’m very sorry, Mr. Pasternek. It appears that your kidneys are having an affair."
(c)_____ Honey, are these reishi mushrooms in the crisper still good?
(d)_____ No comments have been added yet.

Pokeballs by jimpan1973

8.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ With that many Pokeballs, you’ll catch them all for sure.
(b)_____ Note to self about this guy’s work: Gotta avoid it all.
(c)_____ Meanwhile, inside the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant…
(d)_____ This looks familiar. Is this a still from a Lifetime movie about an explosion at the North Pole? I seem to recall that Santa Claus was playing chess with Rybka when suddenly a dirty gel bomb filled with steel ball bearings blew up, and oodles of perfectly replicated spherical bits of Santa covered several continents. The lead investigator, Officer Jenny, speculated that a sleeper cell of disgruntled elves was likely behind the attack. But, of course, that was a false trail. What actually happened was that Cindy Lou Who had gone rogue. I have a still from that film, too. See:

Don’t forget the Grinch Santa. I know he’s mean and hairy and smelly.

big heART by fiery-fire

9.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ I is soooooooooooo happy!!! Whenever I see your pieces I want to just stare at them alllll day!!!
(b)_____ I is soooooooooooo crazy!!! Whenever I see your pieces I want to just jam a power drill into my eye sockets alllll day!!!
(c)_____ I is soooooooooooo stoned!!! Whenever I see your pieces I want to just blot out the resulting unbearable pain with medical marijuana alllll day!!!
(d)_____ Honey, why did you DVR Apocalypto again?

Klimt Crowns the Cliteri by LMarkoya

10.
The correct comment is:
(a)_____ It looks like an abstract lady bits.
(b)_____ If you vajazzle your fractals, does that count as post-processing?
(c)_____ Although this piece is worth little as art, perhaps you can still get something for it on the scrap gold market.
(d)_____ Meanwhile, inside the Large Hadron Collider…

Thank you for playing the home edition of Name! That! Comment! Once you have marked your examination sheet, you can then self-check your scores and status using the grids below.

Moreover, the management here at OT urges our readers to make liberal use of the comments section below in order to add their own creative comment options. Feel free to use the designator (e) for any of the images featured in today’s special edition game show spoof post. Here would be an example:

5. (e)_____ Perhaps my Oxycontin dosage needs to be cut in half.

Until next time…

Scoring Grid:
500 points: Obviously Truckle Challenged
1000 points: Better Hire an Ass-Kissing Tutor
1500 points: Passing from Fawning to Kowtowing
2000 points: Servile to an Extraordinary Extent
2500 points: Cringing with True Submissiveness
3000 points: Bubbly Babs Lifetime Achievement Award

Answer Grid:
1. here
2. here
3. here
4. here
5. here
6. here
7. here
8. here
9. here
10. here

Like the elegant orchids and other surface-dwelling plant species called epiphytes, image comments can have a richness and uniqueness that is surprising when one considers their tiny size and extremely casual origin.

And also like the epiphytes of tropical forests, comments can become almost as great, collectively, as the underlying tree they’ve attached themselves to, to the point of obscuring or upstaging the creature that gave them their dwelling place and opportunity to be.

But it’s a safe bet that comments are never going to die out as long as the synergy and mutually beneficial effects of leaving compliments and leaving personal hyperlinks endures.

But then, who would want them to?  They are the graffiti of our times which, like graffiti, started out as merely idle mischief and casual (senseless) expression but subsequently became the subject of art exhibitions.

Photograph by Dirk van der Made (user:DirkvdM). Epiphytes near Santa Elena, Costa Rica, January 2004. {{cc-by}}

In my journeys through the internet I found one particular “tree” on Redbubble.com whose prolific collection of epiphytes was arresting.  Like their exotic counterparts of the tropical forest, I found some of them to be quite collectible and consequently have arranged them with digital pins below in a virtual specimen gallery.

Just to make one thing clear: I make no judgment as to the “beauty” or “value” of these comments –positive or negative– or even the image they were attached to.  Who needs to judge or point out natural beauty if it truly exists?

But I do add some comments of my own.  Even I can’t stop the natural growth of these things.

The Epiphytic Art of Comments

Artist bio excerpt:

From the sidebar of the image page:

The image:

The History of the Bioluminoidal Fractalization Process, by Rhonda Strickland, on Redbubble.com. Click image to visit original page.

And now an assortment of comments starting with some of the oldest and moving down to (some of) the more recent:

(comments were posted over a period of 2 years)

(-something beneath the sea?  Like something dark and murky?)

(nice and to the point.  Does the “~” mean something?)

(-a picture says a thousand words;  this one –a thousand and one)

(-that’s 3 encores)

(all day long…)

(–is she saying the image and music is great, or that she herself is blind and deaf?)

(–look at those two links.  Who’s being featured here?  The artist or the group?)

(–could there be another Fiery-Fire out there?  One on every art portal?)

(–yes, that’s what I was thinking when I started to read these comments)

(–another short, concise, Hemingway-esque comment, “She photoshopped.  She was good.”)

(–hey, this looks big!  Top Ten?  In the whole Fractal Universe!)

(–hmmmn… not all Top Tens are the same, I’m thinking)

(–2nd runner-up?  I guess you need to know Redbubble to know whether this is something to get excited about.  Looks like Rhonda knows Redbubble pretty good.  Me?  I would have said, “Beat it, Ushna!  It hurts just looking at that graphic!”)

(–didn’t he leave a comment before?  Or did he forget?  To err is human, to forget is “superb”.)

(–I just can’t bring myself to use more than two exclamation marks in a row.  I guess I need more practice.)

(–nothing impresses me more than awards with big, fancy, metallic spelling mistakes in them.  But then, who knows how to spell parallel properly these days?  I’m going to go look it up again.)

    (–the mysterious caps; the repetition; very stylish.  The artsy avatar suggests they might have something just as interesting on their site –and all you have to do is click…)

(–am I making fun of these people?  You get favved 50 times and then the Most Favorites Group favs you with the “fav of favs”.  I wonder what their idea of “success” is?  On the other hand; no spelling mistakes in this one)

(–finally, some intentional humour.  Deviants on Redbubble?  That’s comments to the exponent 2)  

(–“You are really great”  No matter how false or shallow, we all love to hear that, again and again…)

(–check out the moronic face in the volkswagen and how neither of the two vehicles seem to follow the obvious curve in the road that they’ve been cut and pasted onto.  Scary photoshop.  More like crashing edge than cutting edge.  Worse than a spelling mistake, in my mind.)

(–three minutes… but that really is a compliment if you think about it –in the online environment where there’s always something else to click on –like the commentator’s linked avatar and name)  

  (–grammar aside, where exactly are these people coming from if their blacklist is made up of: churches; political events; graveyards; or people?  On the other hand, if they’re that picky then being “approved” by them is really something!)

(–Yeah!  The avatar looks like he really means it.)

(–if this one didn’t crack you up good then you’ve either been reading too many comments like these or you’re the kind of person who posts comments like this.  She’d like to recommend this as Digital Art as soon as she can find out if it is Digital Art?  That’s far out.)

(–was it an animated gif and I took the screenshot before all the frames could load?  Or is it just another example of award images that are a parody of themselves?)

(–best of the bunch, my favourite of all of them.  “Absolutely stunning… have a great weekend”.  In the (post-processed) words of T.S. Eliot… “In the room the women come and go;  Saying “Rhonda, way to go!”)

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

–TS Eliot, here

Well, I hope you enjoyed this lush example of art comments.  If you’re curious about the artist, Rhonda Strickland, you can see more of her work on her Redbubble page.  This particular image to which all these comments were made is apparently presented with music, although I wasn’t able to hear it myself.  She works in a number of genres in addition to fractal art, including that of poetry.

Don’t forget to leave a comment…

Arvinder Bawa recently had a showing of his fractal artworks in Laredo, Cantabria, Spain at the Sala Ruas gallery.  The poster explains it best:

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

Advertisement for Arvinder Bawa’s fractal art exhibition in northern Spain

Arvinder has written an interesting explanation to accompany the exhibit.  I like his simple language and layman’s terms:

…For the exhibition it is necessary to write a short explanation of what these images represent and it is hard to find the words to explain the process without drowning the reader in complex mathematics and iterative equation manipulation programming techniques. In an attempt to make a start in assembling this write-up, here is what I have come up with…The geometry of nature – Fractals – Order and Chaos

The images which makeup this exhibition have been generated by a computer program which follows the behavior of some mathematical equations that represent complex dynamics using complex variables. The behavior of these equations is represented by the images where the black regions are zones of stability and order and the brightly coloured areas are zones of chaos.

…it is only in the last thirty years with the invention of computers and high resolution plotters that we are able to enjoy the chaotic behavior in glorious and beautiful images…

…When we view the images it is as if we are in the presence of something cosmic and familiar, and this is because many of the structures in nature and in our surroundings behave in a similar way. The coastline, the structures in biology and botany, the behavior of populations and economies, the meteorology, cosmology and the study of turbulence in air and fluids all have elements of chaos which is essentially what we can see in the images in this exhibition.

~From Arvinder Bawa’s blog, Arvinder, Aug. 27th, 2012

“Behave in a similar way” –I like that.  What we expect from a branching tree or a crack in the road is what we expect in fractal imagery because they’re following the same kind of rules and “behavior”.  We are at home in both places because they are so much alike.

Arvinder’s work is admittedly a little “retro” as he states in the same blog posting:  “Images such as these were popular in the 80s and the 90s, and many books with wonderful images were published.”

Here’s a handful of thumbnails of the exhibition taken from Marisol Cavia’s Flickr page:

Fractals – The Geometry of Nature – an exhibition by Arvinder Bawa at the Sala Ruas, Laredo, Spain, Oct. 2012

Fractals – The Geometry of Nature – an exhibition by Arvinder Bawa at the Sala Ruas, Laredo, Spain

Thumbnails of some of the exhibited images found on Marisol Cavia’s Flickr page

Arvinder Bawa and colleague, at the Sala Ruas gallery, Laredo, Spain.

Arvinder Bawa, Cork Street, London, England, 2012

Well, what about it?  Why an exhibition of images that are so out of style in today’s fractal art world?  I don’t think the Sala Ruas gallery sticks just anything up on their walls for visitors to look at.  What did the curator of Sala Ruas see in these fractals that most of us, “up to date” fractal folks wouldn’t? (key word: most of us).

There’s been a lot of talk in the fractal world about “Takin’ it to the streets” and introducing the rest of the world to fractal art.  That’s supposed to be the whole idea around the BMFACs and yet Arvinder’s work is precisely the kind of “garish, 70s-style imagery” that the BMFACs hope to erase from the world’s memory.

One thing I’ve realized from a decade of watching the fractal world is this:  I think the fractal world understands the art world to the same degree that the art world understands the fractal world.  That is to say, very little.

We can laugh it up all we want about work like this but someone thought this was worth exhibiting in an art gallery.  I wonder what they’d think about our fractal artwork?

The fractal art world as a whole is as eccentric as the math and programming that goes into creating the imagery.  Arvinder Bawa is one of us because he’s found something in fractals worth looking at and drawing other people’s attention to.  I can’t think of a better definition of “artist” than that.

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

bilding by ZZZ_spb

Just a neon sign, cloudy sky and moon, but what a transformation.  A number of 3d fractalists refer to having an “architectural style” and here you can really see what’s meant by that term and why it is such a natural one in the world of 3d fractals.  Nice and subtle addition to an otherwise average mandelbox.  ZZZ_spb really shines at this sort of thing.

Encapsulation by MarkJayBee

Another example of subtle but powerful.  This is not a terribly exciting mandelbox but the clear box Mark put around it and especially the way he’s colored and textured it’s surface has transformed the simple image into something fascinating.  I don’t think Mark was really trying to make something noteworthy here, just experiment with this inclusion feature of the program. But the final result is great.

Handshaking Buds by Kali

Made in Fragmentarium, a bold new program by Syntopia for making weird, terrifying things like this.  Although, like Mark’s image above, I believe this image is something of a technical experiment rather than an attempt to create art in the strict sense of the word (and what does that mean?), the result is something quite unique and almost humorous as well.  Humour in fractal art?

The power of fractal recursion to repeat things on smaller and smaller scales works quite an artistic effect here in the little shaking hands in the mid-foreground (bottom, center).  You might need to view the hi-res version to really appreciate it.  Next they’re all going to buy the world a Coke…

Growing Phantasma by lxh

Is this what ZZZ_spb’s hotel looks like in the morning?  Well, it’s by lxh, another screen name I’ve been unable to decipher.  Maybe’s that the idea behind these screen names.  Someone ought to compile a list so we can at least decode them from time to time.

Lxh says this about the image on the Fractalforums.com gallery page:

Description: This might be what we see – a foreign city or complex – but in fact it’s the virtual manifestation of thoughts, ideas and efforts of the fractalforums scene and at least stage of my personal fractal journey.

Greetings to all you fractal travelers and explorers out there. May the shape be with you. And many thanks to all the gurus who made my journey possible: Daniel White, Jesse, Tglad, Kali, DarkBeam and all the other genius behind. You are my heroes …

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

(excerpt, The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe)

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night

~lyrics, Hotel California, by the Eagles

Menger on the beach by SaMMY

Made in Structure Synth by SaMMy.  He says this:

Description: I tried to build the mengerbox in a chaotic style – i hope you ENJOY  

Created in Structure Synth ( ~96000 Objects),
rendered in Vue Xstream ( ~9,5 Mill. Polygons, global radiosity),
little corrections in Photoshop.

HEITER WEITER,
—————-
SaMMY

Nice, California look.  The sunlight reflects off the water and off the ceiling of the middle cavity; nice touch.  It resembles those 3d Bryce images that incorporate obviously artificial elements and yet have been seamlessly wrapped in the environment around them as if they grew out of it –right there.  In fact, this menger sponge structure looks like a ruined or dilapidated tropical building.

Crumbleton by FractalJam

“Her mind is tiffany-twisted…”  I see this as an extremely unusual coffee table and of course, the sort of thing that would only reside in a rather wealthy, luxurious kind of place.  It’s an interesting “thing”.  Made of glass; too delicate to be used and thus… tiffany-twisted.

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends

~Hotel California

ExoExhibit by MarkJayBee

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”

~Hotel California

You know, if they had 3d fractals back in 76 when Hotel California came out, then they would have used them for the album cover.  I’m assuming you know what an album cover is.

Mark’s image here uses reflection very well and creates images within the image –of itself!  “Prisoners… of our own device”  As always, if you want to get all the thrills this image has to offer, you need to click on it and see it full-size.  Or check out the mammoth version in Mark’s Deviant Art gallery.

Xenotransplantation by “aka FLUX” (on Flickr)

If you look closely you will see the rough, bud-like points of the mandelbulb.  However, this is not really a 3d image as you might have guessed and has been creatively layered and other things to produce this beastly looking creature.  (Pressed mandelbulb?)  As the title suggests, it’s a combination of various animal tissues –transplants.

From the Flickr gallery page:

Xenotransplantation (xenos- from the Greek meaning “foreign”), is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another.

[…]

A continuing concern is that many animals, such as pigs, have shorter lifespans than humans, meaning that their tissues age at a quicker rate…

I like the symmetry.  Symmetry can give a surreal feeling implying this macabre concoction has morphed into a coat-of-arms symbolizing authority and pride instead of revulsion and fear.

And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast

~Hotel California

Autumn colors1 by Pauldelbrot

Nice coloring, interesting “zipper of the infinite” content, as well as the old “fractalscape” endlessness that is always eye-catching and reminds us that fractal art is playing with power –graphical power.  Which recursion to follow?  Paul’s next image in the series zooms into the green area, which looks small in this view but expands into the infinite in the next.  So many places to go…

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage parameters back
To the place I was before
“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We You are programmed to receive.
You can check-out log-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ”

~Hotel California

Album cover, Hotel California, by the Eagles, released in 1976 just a year after the term, “fractal” was coined by Mandelbrot (and playing ever since in endless recursion and perfect self-similarity).  Click to view back cover, inside, record sleeves, etc…

Simple album cover; just a neon sign, hazy sunset and some colonial architecture.  Computers have changed a whole lot since then, but art is still the same.

Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can find it here

~Hotel California

Listen to the Original song on YouTube

“Some dance to remember, some dance to forget”

Fractalforums.com’s owner, Christian Kleinhuis (aka Trifox) is attempting to put out another fractal art calendar this year.  I reviewed last year’s and called it, “The Best Fractal Calendar Ever!“.

I hope that review scored me enough points over there with the Fractalforums.com folks to cover this year’s review.

Here’s a brief summary of the discussions surrounding this year’s (proposed) calendar:

Screenshot from Fractalforums.com 2013 Calendar order page. Click to go there and read the rest.

How much is that in $US for one copy (shipping included)?

• For German Orders:  $46
• European Orders: $50
• Worldwide: $58

Here’s how Jeremie Brunet (aka bib, bib993) explains it on his Deviant Art page:

Pre-order fractalforums 2013 calendar now!

• by *bib993, Oct 7, 2012, 1:31:19 AM

Dear Watcher,

You might not know that without fractalforums.com, the recent history of 3D fractals, i.e. the discovery of the 3D Mandelbulb and Mandelbox would not have been the same, and we wouln’t have been able to make these extraterrestrial landscapes, strange and fantastic objects like we see flourishing on DeviantArt fractal galleries for about 2 years now.

So now it’s time to say THANK YOU fractalforums for having been the boiling pot which made this new form of 3D fractal art a reality. And especially THANK YOU to Christian Kleinhuis, our beloved administrator, a.k.a. the “priest of chaos” as he likes to call himself for fun on his great new Youtube video series.

So, please support fractal art and the fractal community and go buy the calendar! Moreover, there are several DeviantArt members who took part in this year’s edition of the fractalforums.com calendar (last year, 2012, was the 1st edition), so check out this page at fractalforums.com to view the chosen images and pre-order you calendar by Paypal.

That’s right.  Mr Kleinhuis has been footing the entire bill for Fractalforums.com.  I don’t know what the costs are but I’m sure it’s dedicated hosting (not cheap, shared hosting) and probably runs about $60 to $80 a month.  He’s got some advertising revenue but the majority of the costs probably come right out of his own pocket.

Is $58 too much to ask?  “Brother?”

Taurus66 had this to say in a thread on Fractalforums.com (FFs):

Sorry for the directness guys, but someone needs to say that. The reason, why this calendar doesn’t work, is the same reason, why the cups and the calendar 2012 didn’t work:
It is FAR TOO EXPENSIVE and in addition this time the need of prefinancing via Paypal (incl. non existent shipping costs) looks shady to everyone outside FF.

The day before Taurus66 posted that, a new thread was started by Christian Kleinhuis:

Screenshot from Fractalforums.com. Click image to read the rest…

Further down the thread bib writes:

Have you asked Tim and Terry at OT to do a review?

And then Christian Kleinhuis says this a little later:

…i have written a mail to the info email at orbittrap  but will ask tim directly again this evening

And so, without further introduction or delay…

A Review…

…of the (proposed, but not yet printed)

– Fractalforums.com 2013 Calendar! –

A public “Decap-tionating”

>>><<<

~Click on images to view full-size on the Fractalforums.com Calendar order page~

Vivid, sensory, perfectly rendered image …of a golden golf ball in a manure pile

“When fractal art dies in a calendar, does it make a sound?

Fungus-forums.com

I know this guy’s work. He’s got a hundred better than this one. Nice composition, thought. Sorry.  What’s next?

The Hair Balls of War!

The Guano-bulb. I’m sensing a theme this year…

Now this is a good one. Seriously. Put this on the front cover, seal it, and let customers assume all the rest inside are just as good. This one is so detailed and realistic I zoomed into it and look what I found…

© Plamen Agov • studiolemontree.com

Don’t kid yourself, it doesn’t matter how careful you are; weeds can get into your fractals and ruin everything.

Oops! Another good one. Really, though; you can never go wrong with this guy’s work.  What’s his secret?

1. It’s not cutting edge fractal art 2. Neither is it a new variation on an old theme 3. I don’t care who made it —three strikes, you’re out!

Adamantium Heart? How about, “Daddy, I dropped my ball in the sewer”

In the cave of burning dogfood

Man, there ain’t nothing funny about this one.

2012… Those were the days. When you couldn’t visit Fractalforums.com without seeing something innovative, creative and awesome. History in the making! Forget the calendar thing, man; it’s not worth the hassle.

Does it seem that no one has any interest in the old, 2D fractal images anymore?  And furthermore, does it seem that since the advent of the 3D fractal craze that there are more fractal artists making interesting work than ever before?

I’d answer yes to both those questions.  Numerous times while browsing further and further back in an artist’s gallery on Deviant Art I’d come to the “Before Mandelbulb” era and their notable gallery all of a sudden reverts to UF layering trash.  It’s like the mandelbulb and it’s various other 3D formulas have given many artists superpowers which the old “flat” fractal programs failed to do.

In addition to that, quite a few fractalists are becoming more proficient with the 3D tool set and actually experimenting with non-fractal elements in order to be more creative.  There’s something about the 3D fractal genre I think that makes it easier to relate to and work with.  It’s more fertile ground.

And less abstract?  3D fractals seem to be more realistic or at least, more “concrete”.  Or are the 3D tools just much more powerful and better able to generate interesting imagery?  A few hours playing around in the mandelbulb programs will allow almost anyone to find something interesting?  Like being let loose in some newly discovered lost city with a camera; you can’t fail to bring back something shocking and awesome.

Let’s start with the most awesome thing I’ve seen lately, a new formula variation made by HalTenny (Deviant Art) who also seems to have made the best example of it:

~ Click on any of the blog images to view full-size on their original site~

Industrial Contamination by HalTenny

HalTenny brought us the famous “onion” or 3D metal boiler and enamelled piping images which quickly became a small rendering rage in themselves.  And just as with those, he lead the way.  This new variation looks even better and creates incredibly bizarre and yet realistic looking works.  The use of “fog” to give a photographic depth of field effect works well to give a sense of immensity to the rusted metal structure.

HalTenny’s Deviant Art gallery is well worth taking a look at.  His work just gets better and better and the high quality of the graphical rendering is state of the art.  He comes up with great, new variations of formulas and he’s a rendering perfectionist.  A great combination of talents.

View from the war machine by ZZZ_spb

Some people like to add trees, lakes and birds to their images.  We don’t need them.  They can eat lead and taste shrapnel if they ever come around here.  Nice dreamy Maxfield Parrish sunset, don’t you think?  I like that.  It’s a delightful contrast to the cold machine gun and artillery shells and harsh steel walls of this creatively rendered mandelbox, mandel-something.  Who is this ZZZ_spb guy?  I like his style!

The Hall of Masters by lxh

It doesn’t get much more 3D than this.  I keep expecting to see someone walk in through one of the passageways.  It’s a temple, cathedral or something grandiose like that.  And with the “fog” feature the depth is so realistic it reminds me of big budget CGI movie scenes like the last Harry Potter movie.

The Fractalforums.com gallery page for the image has this note by the artist, lxh:

Since i know it, i’ve always been fascinated by the architectural structures of ABoxMod2. To me it looks like a big pillar hall where all the fractal formula masters have their place. In this case i pimped it with _rotatedFolding, HeightMapIFS and Photoshop. Hope you like it.

Like it?  We love it!  Make another one, please…

The Masters Gallery by lxh

Lxh adds these notes:

As you might can imagine I just had to take a further walk through the hall of masters until Julia brought me a view stages deeper to show me the gallery, a sort of shrine krypta, but empty. And it seems no coincidence that my very first thought was: Right Julia … where all the masters have their place.

I understand this as a preview and i’m thinking of filling these shrines with shining and illuminating classical fractals. This could be the place of Mandelbrot for example. Right behind might be Pythagoras’, Sierpinski’s or Menger’s .. don’t know .. any suggestions?

Suggestions?  Yeah I’ve one: Skulls!

Pendant of Necromancy by Tahyon

Notes from the artist on the Fractalforums.com gallery page:

Mandelbulb 3D 1.7.9.9c and PS CS6
Another Pendant from Alchemist collection
This one has a bit of postwork, but without the skulls it wouldn’t be a necromancer pendant…i put a little beat of evil in his shape
Hope you like it

Postwork done in PS CS6

The Alchemist collection is a set of shiny metallic mandelbulb designs presented as jewellery which you can see by clicking on the image and checking out the original gallery page.  Tahyon has quite a bit of skill as a designer as well as a fractal artist and here the two talents merge perfectly.  I’ve always said that 3D fractals were very ornate and would work well as decorative items.  The skulls (and the screaming skeleton) just add a little polish to the fractal.

Morning Departure by MarkJayBee

Mandelbulb 3D v1.53

Found this ‘ship’ departing from the area of ‘Thedus Station’….

A rock that looks like an old fashioned wooden sailing ship.  It’s hard to imagine a rock looking like a sailing ship, but there it is.  A good example of how profitable it can be to wander around and browse a 3D fractal.  Mark, of course, has many more images which are much more sophisticated than this “rock” and here’s one that is also a little offbeat:

Dôme de Champ Magnétique by MarkJayBee

Notes from the Fractalforums.com gallery page by the artist:

Mandelbulb 3D v1.7.9.9c TestFile

DEcombinate using: discoballIFS/PolyFolding/ABoxModKali/Menger3/_reciprocalY3/_SphereFolding1

Managed to get an inside view of Luca’s new ‘discoballIFS’ formula; playing about with iterfog gives some interesting – but unpredictable! – transparency ‘diffraction’ effects.  

Hi-Res version at:
http://markjaybee.deviantart.com/art/Dome-de-Champ-Magnetique-316046235

The “diffraction” effects he’s referring to are quite creative.  They almost look like something a photoshop filter would have produced.  Just as HalTenny’s renderings are super clean and perfect, this one is rough and wild and yet reaches a similar level of perfection in a very different category of style.

Here’s a fantastic example of Mark’s advanced “watercolor-like” mandelbulb style:

GSV MainBay III by MarkJayBee

Mark has worked as a professional illustrator, photographer and photo-restorer and somewhere I read that his goal with 3D fractals is to create sci-fi illustrations.  I think he’s achieved that goal.

To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank… by Mandelwerk (Kraftwerk)

Kraftwerk, on Fractalforums.com, or Mandelwerk on Deviant Art has really tried hard to take 3D fractals to that higher level of more expressive, cerebral art.  This actually is not a good example of that, but it is a good example of his rich and sophisticated coloring, an artistic quality that is less exploited by 3D fractal artists than it is by the 2D ones.  I like the shape, color and pattern to the fish object and the rendering is so photo-realistic that I would expect on closer examination to see that it’s carved from wood and covered with a thin layer of plaster and paint.

Nagasaki by Mandelwerk

Artist notes from Deviant Art gallery page:

My second image of the two horrible events that took place in Japan in August 1945.
I hope I will never have to create a third image.

Thinking of the hundreds of thousands people who lost their life and to those whose life is still affected by the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

Mandelbulb 3D
My own photo of sky added in Photoshop.

The 400 pixel version I have up there really doesn’t do justice the original which is 1280px wide.  It’s a neat depiction of distorted architecture and also of what could be interpreted as atomic models spinning and whirring away on the left.  If you loved Nagasaki you’ll love Hiroshima too:

Hiroshima by Mandelwerk

Image notes from Deviant Art gallery page:

When I found this theatrical scenery of a big city in a frozen moment just as it gets hit by a heavy impact I knew I had to do my Guernica. [link]

The stylized high buildings and twisted structures gave me the image of the vision I had as a child when I heard about what once had happened in the City of Hiroshima.

I have been working on this piece for almost a month to get the disposition and ambience exactly as I wanted it to be, to show my respect for the hundreds of thousands people who lost their life and to those whose life is still affected by the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

Mandelbulb 3D, rendered with 7760 x 3490 resolution, a very important aspect…

I hope mankind will never use these terrible weapons again.

Mandelbulb 3D, Photoshop

Can fractals be thought provoking and express ideas and not merely delight our eyes with beautiful designs and ornate details?  You know, maybe he’s done it and that without leaning too heavily on Photoshop to make mere fractal “elements” into something completely different.

Well, it looks like Mandelwerk’s pair of fractal images has managed to express and evoke something more substantial than the usual eye candy wonders. I could see something like this made into an actual outdoor sculpture/memorial type of thing.  An artist like that deserves his own public exhibition.  Browsing his Deviant Art gallery will quickly show you what I mean by his unique graphical style and persistence in trying to move fractal art to a higher level.  I’ve said it couldn’t be done, but I was just speculating on the future based on all the junk we were all making at the time.

Circuitry Circus #4 by Reallybigname

Reallybigname brought us the Mayan Trickster images that were symphonies of detail and design.  This one is equally good although you’ll need to view it full-size to really appreciate it.  Here’s another one in the series:

Circuitry Circus #2 by Reallybigname

The detail isn’t just of high quantity, which is easy enough to find in any fractal formula whether 2D or 3D even, the detail is also of exceptionally high quality and shows the processing power of these formulas to create unimaginable imagery.  This is the world’s most complicated clock or circuitry as the name suggests.

Soldiers in a Row by skyzyk

Skyzyk ignored the rules about color when he made this image.  Or is Skyzyk now writing the rules about color?  Ironically, this 3D image has a flattened appearance to it.  But the plastic look it has is why I like it so much.  These are distinctly artificial colors if one can say that in the context of digital art.  It’s the bowels of a machine, a plastic extruding, super-advanced toy factory (and shiny!).

Here’s another one by “Skyzyk the Rule-Breaker:”

Hall of Champions by Skyzyk

It’s eerie and creepy and the pillars look like they’re made of celery –celery gone bad and yellow– and all this because of the color!  Nice touch.

Jan 20 by Skyzyk

Not an uncommon 3D fractal rotary cheese-grater image.  But transformed into something radically different and resembling a hand-drawn comic book image by Skyzyk’s mysterious color talents.  If you look closely at the full-size image on Skyzyk’s Deviant Art gallery page, you’ll see the artistic effect his coloring style has on the “drive shaft” structure.

Artist notes for the image:

Made with Mandelbulb3D 1.796 by jesse, [link] ,Photoshop and or finished in Dynamic Photo HDR5 Formulas by [link]
Artwork Copyright at myfreecopyright. [link]
My work is not and should not be considered Public Domain. All my works are watermarks embedded with Digimarc. My works are not to be shared anywhere without my express consent and written permisssion.

Please note that my parameters are available upon request. If you would like to download the full image, or as a print, also, please notify me.
Member of #GetWatchers: We help Artists to expand their audience. Expand yours… You can Join us Here.OU!!!

HDR?  Maybe that and the Photoshop finishing explains the stylish look.  This HDR is the same thing that photographers (like Ron Fitch) use to combine several versions of the same shot with varying levels of contrast to make a richer image with more “pop” as the Dynamic Photo HDR website says.

Tower by ZZZ_spb

This is just plain cool.  Wait, look!  It’s by the same guy as made the machine gun one above.  I often don’t see the artist’s name when browsing around the fractal art world because they aren’t always that noticeable.  (And some names are harder to remember than others.)

It’s a desert sky at sunset… the ornate stone work suggests bricks and blocks, not slabs… the little window is typical of a defensive position… the title, “Tower” suggests the artist was thinking the same thing… the machine gun and artillery shells of his last one…  all this reminds me of an interesting photo I saw on Wikipedia of an ancient tower:

Tripoli Tower of Lions (Lebanon) c1900 from Wikipedia

Or the famous university library at UNAM in Mexico City:

UNAM Library by Oscar Esquimal

From the blog, Esquimal.

You can check out more by ZZZ_spb on Fractalforums.com on this page if I’ve copied the link correctly.  (Linking to some things can be pretty complicated these days.)

Looking forward by ZZZ_spb

Yes, we just can’t rule out any possibility when it comes to 3D fractals, looking forward…

I found his gallery on Flickr during a routine search of the word, “fractal”.  I clicked on a couple of unusual looking thumbnails and quickly headed straight to his main gallery page.

~ Click on images to view full-size on original site ~

walls and plumbing by Ronald Fitch

Ron uses one of the 3D mandelbulb programs but he must be pushing some different buttons because his work is quite unique.  In fact, for the image above Ron says this:

one pattern is good but two may be better. This seems to be a set of booths with plumbing. The booths are colored with a painting by the great Lyonel Feinniger, one of his paintings of boats for which I have yet to find a really good use. The lower level is a bit of Miro.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24489820@N02/8096099493/in/photostream

I guess he’s using a texture mapping feature from the program and instead of a standard texture he’s used that feature to apply a famous artwork on the surface of the mandelbox structures.

The effect can be quite powerful especially when he starts to embellish the final image with other items:

fins of bricks by Ronald Fitch

The window makes for an interesting touch and is a further example of how introducing realistic elements in 3D fractals can work quite well.  With the old 2D fractals such photoshopping usually  came out looking odd and unnatural.

afternoon view or the tower by Ronald Fitch

This is a picture that began life as a picture that looked like it was taken through a window It is entirely unlike anything else I’ve seen out of Mandelbulb 3D.

Ron’s got a real eye for the unusual and creative.  Who has ever made a Mandelbulb image as freaky as that?

feathered roof masts by Ronald Fitch

This is the type of fractal image I describe as “raw style” although the Mandelbulber programs tend to make imagery that is much easier to relate to than the old style 2D programs.  It’s worth viewing this one on Flickr by clicking on the “actions” button and viewing the largest size image.  I think you can jump right there via this link.

The gallery page says this about the image:

This is derived from two images combined with Dynamic HDR, a program meant for somewhat different purposes. This is easily done with two or three versions of the same image. these can differ in various ways but one must be darker and one lighter.

That’s High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR), a high-tech photography trick that allows you to combine several photos of the same thing taken under differing conditions of focus and lighting and produce a composite image that has the wide range of detail that more resembles a drawing or painting than a photograph.  I’ve never heard of anyone applying it to a fractal image, although some layering techniques probably approach the same sort of composite effect.

Here’s a couple of Ron’s photos that exhibit the HDR effect:

clouds3 by Ron Fitch

cactus truck b by Ron Fitch

water ditch 1b by Ron Fitch

It allows you to capture an entire scene despite the widely contrasting light and contrast and put it all together in a single photograph in the way only a painter would have been able to do before.  Of course, you need a good photograph to start with otherwise the final result is only of technical interest.  I really like all three of these despite the fact that the subjects are quite ordinary.  But it’s the mark of a good photographer that they can produce something interesting from the ordinary.

The top image of the cars and house is incredibly mundane and yet it’s got some strange spark to it.  Ron’s also processed it a bit which may not be as evident in the low-res example here.  But still, it’s a real accomplishment to turn the mundane into the magical.  The water ditch has an old-time tinted photo look to it.

Back to fractals…

rutted road through the wilderness by Ron Fitch

The old and the new; the rough and the smooth.  Notice what humble titles Ron gives to his works.  I’ll bet he never thought he’d someday be a big star on Orbit Trap.  Let’s hope he stays this humble.

Ron’s unique rendering style shows through in the top one.  It appears more hand-crafted than formulaic.  The coloring further adds to the old-style feel.  Rather good composition in this one which can be a real challenge in fractal art.

interconnections and bus by Ron Fitch

A relatively simple image and yet the contrasting “movements” between the interconnecting objects in the foreground and the rushing bus in the mid-ground are instantly apparent and captivating.  It’s surprises like this that keep so many artists browsing around in the Mandelbulbs/boxes looking for just one more.

Well, there you go.  Now you know Ronald Fitch.

Hey!  Wasn’t Orbit Trap supposed to be closed down?  Wasn’t Orbit Trap supposed to be finished with and over and all that sort of thing?

Well, let me explain.  In short, I got tired of blogging every week and after six years decided it was time to give it a rest.  Eight months later I realized that a niche blog doesn’t need weekly updates to remain relevant and I began to consider starting it up again with a more relaxed attitude.  Yes, a much more relaxed attitude.

Orbit Trap has never been a one-man show and would be rather one-dimensional if it were.  Long ago me and Terry had decided that we’d retire Orbit Trap rather than keep it going with only one of us as the sole contributor.  Similarly, neither of us was going to resurrect the blog on our own.

Now it’s back up and running.

I like fractal art.  Even more, I like commenting on it.  Public art begets public commentary and no place is as public as the internet.  Fractal art and the internet are intertwined.

A blog about fractal art is just such a natural thing.

Orbit Trap is closing down.  This is the last and final post you will be reading here.

No, this is not a joke.

After almost 6 years of continuous weekly and sometimes daily (hourly?) publishing, we, the co-editors of Orbit Trap, Tim Hodkinson and Terry Wright have decided that the blog has run its course and now it’s time to move on to new projects.  If you’ve just discovered Orbit Trap and are curious about it’s 6-year history, I suggest you check out the About Page.

The blog and all its postings will still remain online for at least the duration of our current web hosting contract, as an archive, but there won’t be any more new content posted to Orbit Trap from this point onward (February, 2012).

If you’d like to hear our opinions on where the Fractal Art world is going or what we have to say about Fractal Art in general, or our commentary on any of the various events or entities in the Fractal-sphere, then I’d suggest you read the blog (again?).  Anything posted by “Tim” is a good bet.

In Terry’s words, “We came.  We saw.  We left.”

In the words of Sergio Leone, “You can’t be a communist if you own a villa.”

In the words of Arthur Dent, “I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.”

In the words of Dirty Harry, “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ ”

But as is always the case in the Blogosphere it’s the comments section that gets the last word.